ARE WE THERE YET?

As we watched TV election returns in 2000, there was something eerie about Florida. Then announcers called Florida for Gore and the reporters focused in on candidate "W" Bush and family who were watching the election results in Texas.

That's when it got real spooky as "W" disputed Gore's win. Petulantly, he avowed that brother Jeb had assured him of the majority of votes in that state. It was as if someone waved a magic wand as the news stations suddenly decided that "W" had really won Florida.

It would be hard to forget what followed with the chads and the Supremes. But most certainly we can never forget how the candidate getting the most votes lost the election. Third world countries were offering us lessons in Democracy.

After that it was just one thing after another as Bush came out from behind the "compassionate" label that he hid behind during the campaign. Environmental and health and safety protections fell by the wayside as Bush assailed President Clinton's initiatives one by one.

With his entourage of Ashcroft, Rummy and Cheney, Bush talked the Christian talk but never walked the walk. Under A.G. Ashcroft, church reigned supreme and trumped state. Under S.O.D. Rumsfeld, wars blossomed like oil wells in conquered countries.

VP Cheney held a SECRET meeting to seek information for forming the energy policy of the Bush administration. We the people were neither privileged to know the participants nor their testimony.

The testimony is still in the dark, just another one of the closely held secrets of the administration but the "consultants" were finally disclosed to be corporate giants in energy, mostly oil.

We recall the "brownouts" suffered by California that were traceable to the Bush administration's flawed policies. FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) stood by doing nothing while California got ripped off for $45 billion.

It was pay back time. Crippling punishment for a state that voted heavily against Bush. The California economy was in danger of destruction and is still billion$ in debt. The results are seen now in the cacophony of a recall election throwing the state into even deeper debt and disharmony.

Little has been proposed or done to use alternative energy sources by the Bush regime. Their one effort in that direction promised an environmental hell, and destruction of pristine land in Alaska with oil drilling. Of course Democrats, and many Republicans, voted against it.

Much of the Northeast recently suffered from a grid failure and power was lost mostly in an area containing "blue" states (those carried by Gore) and a bit of Canada, a country Bush hates. http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html

Only minutes after the failure, the Bush government was claiming it was not terrorist. How could they have possibly known in those few minutes? Remember, after more than a week of investigation, the cause of this massive power failure is still unknown. The Bush media has quickly asserted that Al Qaeda has claimed credit. Convenient, wot?

We have not been told the truth about 9/11 but we have learned that the administration had prior information of such an attack from several sources and did nothing. We do know that immediately following this catastrophe, Bush allowed many prominent Saudis to leave this country thus escaping questioning and possible arrest.

Persuaded by lies and sexed-up intelligence information, the Bush regime convinced Congress to invade Iraq. The oil fields were captured and the rest of the country was left to the hoodlums until world opinion forced intercession by the armed forces.

It seems that nothing was planned for the cessation of hostilities except to insure Haliburton's control of Iraqi oil. They certainly did not plan any protection for the United Nation's workers as evidenced by this week's bomb. Was that pay back or a warning to the UN to butt out?

From "The Danger of American Fascism," by Henry A. Wallace in an article in the New York Times, April 9, 1944:

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm

twanda@sover.net

2003-034

Copyright 2003 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@sover.net.