Do You Feel Safer Now Than You Did Four Years Ago? Under Bush, and the Republican Party, Your Security is the Worse it's Been In a Generation. Could This Phrase Be Kerry's Bush-toppler?
by Rob Kall
Under Bush, and the Republican choke-hold on the house and senate, terrorism Is the worse It's Been in 22 Years, but let's not even talk about terrorism yet.
Under Bush, do you feel your retirement is as secure as it was when a democrat was in the Whitehouse and we had a four trillion dollar surplus.?
Under Bush, do you feel that your healthcare is as secure as it was in the 90's, that the Republicans are really looking after your health's best interests, or, perhaps more accurately, looking after the pharmaceutical company interests?
Under Bush, do you feel your job is as secure, that your future employment is as secure?.
Under Bush, do you feel you are as well protected as you were four years ago, from abuses and corruption by big business, by transnational corporations that owe allegiance to no nation, only to the profit-line? Think Enron, Tyco, MCI, Lehmann...
Under Bush, do you feel that the air you breath, the water you drink and the food you eat (untested beef, drug-infested chicken, pesticide covered fruits and vegetables) are safer? Do you trust the national agencies, now run by Bush appointees, to do as good a job to protect your health and saety, or the environment?
Under Bush, do you feel that the nation's assets, the "commons" are being protected and preserved or sold off cheap to donors and insiders?
Under Bush, and Ashcroft and Cheney, do you feel that democracy is stronger or weaker, that your individual rights are equal to or less than four years ago? Has the Bush administration eroded the democratic, constitutional rights you possessed? Even though they've been taken away in the name of security, or to prevent terrorism?
Okay, now we can talk about terrorism.
The truth is that not only is terrorism the worst it's been in over 20 years, but in April, the State department released a flawed report that said terrorism was down. Most pundits and experts are saying this wasn't intentional, though there are plenty of reasons to suspect more lies from the WMD and Medicare big lie administration. But apparently, this is a case of incompetence. Think about it. The Bush appointees who are in charge of dealing with terrorism can't even count.
The revised report indicates that the number of terrorist attacks was the highest counted since 1982. The original report made the Bush administration look pretty good-- terrorism down, deaths down, attacks down since the previous year. The true numbers showed that they'd underestimated by more than half, the number of deaths, injuries in terrorist attacks in 2003.
Of course we're still working with definitions of terrorists, terrorist attacks, terrorist victims that were created by the Bush administration. Me, I don't trust them. If the numbers look bad with the corrections they had to swallow, my guess is they are far worse when you factor out the distortions, lies and secrecy that one must routinely add to any report coming out of the Bush camp.
It's not surprising that terrorism is up. You don't send a serial failure (Bush ran every company he was involved with into the ground before going into politics) or an arrogant egotist to get rid of a hornet's nest. Bush is a moron and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell are guilty of the latter. Rumsfeld was always known as a hawkish thug. Powell has lived down to the Bush administrations standards an he threw away his reputation when he went in front of the UN and told his wild folktale about WMDs. A lot of us knew, right then, that he was presenting a sloppily woven fabric of lies and half truths. It was sad to watch an icon turn rotten.
Do you feel safe about social security? If you're a boomer or older then retirement is looming near. Bush has spent your retirement money and you can anticipate being told, at some point, that you'll have to wait until you're even older before you're allowed to retire, and that you'll get less.
Under 45? The younger you are, the more likely you are to feel immortal, to not worry about your old age and retirement. It's too bad that businesses have no employee loyalty any more. That big corporation could fire you, without benefits, in a flash, then outsource your job to India . That'll leave you either without benefits or having to pay a huge monthly fee for COBRA temporary coverage. How about medications for your parents. Do you trust these new discount cards. What do you think of those Republicans, making a deal allowing the drug companies to raise their prices without restraint? How about those republicans, selling a congressional bill based on false cost projections that were intentionally hidden.
What about the rest of the transnational, loyal to no nation megacorporations that have rights to be treated as persons here in the US . They've given millions of dollars to Bush and the Republicans and they expect to be repaid with tax cuts, subsidies, de-regulation and increased privatization. Doesn't the brazen way the Bush administration coddles big corporations make you feel like you're being bended over naked, ready to be.... taken advantage of, screwed, reamed, violated, written off, raped, treated treacherously?
How about that bill of rights the nations founders created? Are you wondering, after John Ashcroft and can't-do-no-wrong-George W. get through with them, what you will have left. If they get their way, you'll have zero privacy, they'll be able to arrest you and hold you for years, maybe even until you die.Why? Because George W. says so. And we should trust him? Unbelievable!.
Like the hugely successful Book series the fundamentalist Christians are eating up, Bush "Left Behind" the people of America , in favor of Big corporations, in favor of big debt, in favor of reduced individual rights. Or, after I commented on the Thom Hartmann show, the next caller said, "George deserted America ."
I wish it were that benign. Desertion is one level of crime. But Bush has done far worse. He is a nation rapist, a chronic liar and fraud who has colluded with foreign entities-- transnational corporations, Saudis, for starters.
The slogan "Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?" was fantastically successful for Ronald Reagan. John Kerry should be asking this question. Do You Feel Safer Now than You Did Four Years Ago. Democrats running for congress all over the nation should be using this question to pound home the reality that the Republican party and George Bush are not in the American citizen's home court. They're playing for the other side-- the corporate side.
This article was inspired by another article Are You Safer Today Than You Were Four Years Ago? by Peter Rottier.
Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is publisher of progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com and organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders, such as the Winter Brain Meeting and the StoryCon Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story This article is copyright Rob Kall and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog or web media so long as this credit paragraph is attached. Over 100 other articles by Rob Kall
