Wednesday, March 12, 2003

To me, it's astounding how different two Christian men's opinions can be.
I'm thinking of the opinion of Jimmy Carter as a Christian vs. GWB as a Christian.
Same professed love of Christ...polar opinions on this preemptive war.
To me, if Bush says his faith is leading him toward war, it's wrong-minded faith.
It's faith tainted with a ruling mind.
If Bush listened to his real King, he would be humbled.
If one of them is twisting God to fit their plan, I would have to say it's Bush.
Carter's opinion is clearly more deeply-rooted in goodness...rooted in the spirit of love.
You may say to yourself, "But Bush is trying to protect all of us..that is loving"
I say to you: "Loving isn't ONLY about loving people because they are members of a nation.
Love is universal and should be applied to all of humanity...every soul considered sanctified."


Jimmy Carter's view is far more deeply rooted in the meaning of love and compassion.
Fox and CNN are glossing over a lot of important details with their endless repetition of mundane details 24/7...ad nauseum. No cable news journalist today is going to delve into details that haven't already been passed on to them through the "powers-that-be"...whether it's the White House or the "corporate taskmaster".
There are no Woodwards/Bernsteins/Cronkites anynmore. Even Woodward/Bernstein have become a watered-down version of what they once were.
The REAL consequences of a unilateral US vs Iraq action will not be seen in the short time it takes to run over Hussein's weak regime.
It will rear its head for years to follow..at OUR expense..the civilians of this nation..who will be blamed because it was perceived by those outside our nation that we people have a true choice in our representative's decisions..which I believe, as each day passes, that we really do not.
And I agree with Gary Hart's March 9 Washington Post op-ed- that it seems that Bush has little trust, respect or regard for the people of this nation...the ones he claims to be protecting.
I am concerned about what will happen in the Arab world. We aren't going to be able to handle the load when they all unite and we have no international forum to rely upon because WE made them "irrelevant". What a recipe for sheer disaster for this nation.
Credibility down the tubes....citizens disrespected and made just as irrelevant as the UN itself.

And no decent investigative journalist to talk about it.
Hart blasts Bush on Iraq
Detour From the War on Terrorism By Gary HartSunday, March 9, 2003; Page B07

Who GW Bush's Economic Plans Won't Help

War is not pretty
Let's say Saddam Hussein does have any weapons of mass destruction or chem/bio weapons (*insert no actual proof here*), why are we shocked that he is most likely to use them if provoked?

The Bush administration seems single-mindedly bent on this invasion. It almost seems that they are bitterly disappointed whenever there's a hint that the weapons inspections are actually working.

A UN resolution with absolutely NO ambiguity is what we need. It is not America's place to preemptively strike Iraq. I firmly believe it is not in the best interest of the American people at this point in time.

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An Alternative to War
A Run on Road Less Traveled--Dean speaks mind in race
By Timothy M. PhelpsSTAFF CORRESPONDENT
March 9, 2003Spartanburg, S.C.
- Most politicians don't talk much about race when they come courting voters here at the Beacon Drive-In, least of all Yankee politicians. But talking to a small group of blacks, Howard Dean, the plain-talking former governor of Vermont, wades right in."You know all those white guys riding around with Confederate flags in the back of their pickup trucks?" referring to a species amply represented elsewhere in the megaburger joint. "Well, their kids don't have health insurance either!"

Up until that moment Dean, 54, whose stature is short and thick, befitting the high school wrestler he once was, and whose demeanor is a bit stiff, had been getting only polite nods from his audience, in between their slurps of chicken stew and bites of pecan pie. But this blunt appeal to a commonality of racial interests won the moment, and a burst of applause.The doctor, who grew up in Manhattan and spent all his free time as a boy in East Hampton, is running for president as a kind of "honest Abe" candidate, determined to speak his mind. Asked about textiles in a region that has lost thousands of such jobs to Mexico, he says he's against tariffs. He brings up the fact that he signed legislation in Vermont permitting gays to join together in civil unions. "You think I'm going to be popular for it?" he asks a local newspaper editor. "Nope!"

But he is confident that voters want honesty even more than they want the right answer."People would rather vote for somebody strong and wrong than right and weak," he asserted in Spartanburg. "What I'm about is telling it like it is for a change," he said in an interview later. "That's what's wrong with politicians in this country. Most voters think politicians will say anything to get elected."Telling it like it is for Howard Dean creates an unusual assortment of liberal and conservative positions.He is outspokenly critical of President George W. Bush's position on Iraq but has a record as a fiscal moderate or conservative any Republican would be proud of. He signed and still supports legislation in Vermont that allows gays to join together in a "civil union" with all the rights of marriage, but opposes new federal gun laws.But he sounds like a true liberal on social policy. Dean is a big advocate of universal health coverage, and as governor managed to pass legislation that ensures Vermont children who need it can get health coverage through Medicaid. He says he had a strong record on environmental issues, particularly land conservation, though some environmentalists in Vermont say he didn't do enough and some Republicans complain he did too much.As the iconoclastic former governor of one of the nation's smallest states, with little money in his political bank, he is a long shot for the Democratic presidential nomination. But these supposed weaknesses differentiate him from his competition. He has financial and ideological independence and is the only Washington outsider considered to have a chance, drawing comparisons to Jimmy Carter's successful candidacy in 1976.

Lately his strong message has attracted increasing attention. At the important Feb. 22-23 meeting of the Democratic National Committee he seemed to some the most popular of the candidates, winning a rousing ovation for declaring that he represents "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.""The question is, is it time for an ordinary guy to be president of the United States?" asked Stephen Kimbell, a Vermont lobbyist and longtime Dean adviser. "He's not smooth, he's not rich, he's not larger than life in any aspect.

"Actually, Dean's background is not that of an "ordinary guy." The son of a wealthy stockbroker and an art appraiser, he grew up in the rarefied precincts of the Upper East Side, at 86th and Park Avenue, attending a private school before shipping off to an elite boarding school, St. George's, outside Newport, R.I. He spent weekends and summers in East Hampton.

He went to Yale, where he majored in political science. He spent a year skiing in Colorado and two years working on Wall Street before deciding on medicine. He took some night science courses at Columbia before starting medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

He went to Vermont for his medical residency, and hardly had set out his shingle there as an internist when he got into politics. While maintaining his practice he won a seat in the part-time state legislature, and surprised many by winning the election for lieutenant governor in 1986. In that role, Dean, who does not drink and is often described as "straight," was dubbed by the press corps as "Dr. Dull."Friends say he was conducting a rectal exam of a patient in 1991 when he learned that the governor had died and he had become the state's leader. He has not practiced medicine since, even accidentally allowing his medical license to expire last month. Some friends said the routine work of an internist, exemplified by what he was doing when he got the call as governor, was not exciting enough for him.

Despite alienating many Democrats at first by adhering to his Republican predecessor's fiscal plan, Dean was elected in his own right to five two-year terms, even after signing the controversial civil marriage law for gays in April 2000.Even some Vermont Republicans give Dean passing marks for the job he did as governor.

John Bloomer, the Senate minority leader, said Dean was an "OK to good" governor, good until he started moving to the left on social issues during his last term. He said Dean was a fiscal moderate with accomplishments in health, education and the environment.

But Bloomer said Dean, described by friend and foe as a supremely self-confident man, "takes his own counsel and sometimes above everybody else's. Sometimes when you are running a state or a nation you need to have divergent opinions discussed."

In South Carolina, after using the line about the white guys with Confederate flags, Dean proudly asked his mostly black handlers how they liked it. He didn't seem to notice their apparent nervousness about it, and Dean liked it so much he used it again there and also in Washington at the Democratic National Committee meeting.

But Dean's whole approach is as the person who is different and will go his own way.In the State House in Montpelier, there are rows of staid portraits of past governors. Dean's has him in a casual shirt, with a canoe, a paddle, Lake Champlain and the brilliant fall foliage."I spent 11 1/2 years with black-frocked men looking down at me. I didn't want another portrait like that," Dean said.
Copyright 2003 Newsday