[Bleyseng]

Good article on the election if you didn't get a chance to read it.


Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet, by Charley Reese

Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's
re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war - Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of
neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers. I have sadly
come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a frontman, an
empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration.

Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the wo! rld of any
president in my memory. It's no wonder the president avoids press
conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely
talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of
Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own
president at their joint press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to
think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than
Bush's comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's
unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very
intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his
presidential election efforts. But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as
he did so often, when he observed that people who expect to be
ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.

People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display
! their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush.
Bush is as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he
fooled me once, but he won't fool me twice. It is not at all
conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly increase the
power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution and the
rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American
jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don't
matter, and that people should not know what their government is
doing.

Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in
the 20th century. His administration leans dangerously toward the
authoritarian. It's no wonder that the Justice Department has
convicted a few Arab-Americans of supporting terrorism. What would you
do if you found yourself arrested and a federal prosecutor whispers in
your ear that either you can plea-bargain this or the president will
designate you an enemy combatant and you'll be held incommunicado f! or
the duration?

This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but
because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's
almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race.
America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends
anywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush
administration. Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us,
Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace. I
will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a
man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and
us with it. Go to Kerry's Web site and read some of the magazine
profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry
than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe. Besides, it would be
fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles,
plays the guitar, wr! ites poetry and speaks French. It would be good to
have a man in th e White House who has killed people face to face.
Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all
illusions about war.