Energy and Medicare Bills To Give Billions to Top Bush Fundraisers

Why am I not surprised?

And the energy bill died. Boo hoo for it.

Oh, and do you wnat to know who earmarked the money for ethanol, pharmaceuticals, etc? Congress. President Bush just wanted something, and Congress put in money to the people they wanted it to go to. It just so happens that these companies in both bills are big contributors to both political parties. So, hypothetically, if Al Gore was president, we'd be saying that this was a sweet insider deal for his contributors, because these people usually swing both ways to insulate themselves from any changes in power.

Sorro,

I've followed your posts for a good while now and you truly (and I mean TRULY) never cease to amaze me.

Honest and serious question (to be answered honestly and seriously) - Is there even a tiny part of your brain which questions some of the things this president has done? Any miniscule glimmers of dissent? When you are presented with case after case, fact after damning fact, is nothing this man has done questionable to you? Nothing?

As I've said here before, I'm Irish, with no political affiliation - Con/Dem/Rep/Lib - I make no distinction other than what my gut, head and heart tells me is right. Is it possible - and I'm playing Devil's Advocate here - that you are so entrenched in the Republican 'ethos' (perhaps you come from generations of ardent Republicans?) that you simply cannot allow yourself to stick you head over the top and LOOK?

I'm genuinely curious, Sorro. No offence meant.

Phil

None taken Phil. I do disagree with the President, although it is not very often. The things that Bush has done with tarriffs to help him win the Steel Belt and the South (as though he needed that) are just plain wrong. He's supposedly a free trader, yet he traded those credentials in to try and buy votes that will swing to the Democrats anyway. I also disagree with his spending policies. Bush is allowing Congress to walk all over him and his supposed spending caps. Yeah, inflation is good enough for the common person, so it should be good enough for the government. That's good rhetoric, but that's all it is. Instead of actually using his veto (I think he's the first president to ever get this far in his term without actually vetoing something), he lets Congress put all the pork in these bills that they want, and then he signs it anyway.

Do I think that Bush gives sweetheart deals to people? I'd imagine so, although not nearly on the scale that a lot of people say so. Just like all politicians, he will work to get a line here or there inserted in things for people who have helped him out - unfortunately, that's how Washington works now. Nevertheless, I don't think that most of the things Bush does are for his buddies in Big Industry X. Let's take the energy bill for example. It has subsidies to just about everybody on the planet, some good, some bad. I think the nuclear subsidies are good, as well as the ones to haul natural gas down from Alaska, but the ethanol subsidies (made to mollify Sen. Daschle) and the oil ones are not needed. The original energy bill didn't have most of this stuff in there - it was added by Congress to appease different votes. The ethanol provision was to secure votes from the Senators (on both sides of the aisle) in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. This wasn't done by Mr. Bush, but by Congress. Same thing with the Medicare bill. Most of these subsidies are put there by Congress, so why should I blame Bush for it? Some like to do it, because they hate him, but shifting the blame is the same thing that they get mad at the politicians for doing. I'll blame Bush for executive decisions that he makes that are wrong, but not for legislative ones that Congress makes.

Thanks for the reply Sorro

I guess what I was asking is - I hedged on the linguistics because I genuinely didn't want to be incendiary for the sake of it - can you see absolutely nothing wrong with this 'War On Terror' and the massive implications/questions it has thrown up?

As far as the War on Terror, I really don't see anything wrong with it. Sure, we could have planned better for different aspects of what we have done, and Iraq may have been safer, but on the whole I agree with the logic of the war. I've wanted to see Saddam Hussein out of power since Bush 41 left him in 12 years ago, and I would back almost anybody who would push him out (say Clinton, for argument's sake). Similarly, I see Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority as other groups/nations that not only are bad for their people, but that have the potential to be or are a threat to US national security. I see the UN as an impotent, anti-Israeli body that isn't worth the building it's housed in.

As far as the "sweetheart deals," I think that usually more are made of them than should be made of them. People take fact x and add it to fact y and then get z, whether or not z is the correct answer. For example: Dick Cheney was Halliburton CEO+Halliburton's KBR has a lot of work in Iraq=They got the stuff because of Cheney. That's far too simplistic, and while some of these things may factor into the equation (perhaps their chances went up because of Cheney), there are other things that nobody cares to look at because they are too busy hating the other side. Things like KBR's prior experience in this field, their LOGCAP contract, the different bids submitted (in the case of no-bid contracts - past bids and the need to urgently get things moving), etc.

I guess my problem is that it's NOT a war on "Terror," but rather a war on who is the most convenient person to LINK to terrorism. 17 of the 9/11 attackers are Saudis. Saudis openly fund Al-Qaida and associated groups. We have intelligence reports implicating them with solid evidence in deadly attacks against Americans, and those reports are sat on until we can black their name out.

NONE of the 9/11 attackers or any (pre-war) recent attacks against Americans are Iraqi. Iraq funded terrorsts ages ago, but didn't have much recent activity in that area, much less aiding Al-Qaida. We had intelligence reports NOT implicating them possessing WMD, and report NOT implicatin them in workin with Al-Qaida, and those reports were IGNORED in favor sketchy intelligence from "allies" that was dismissed when verified independently.

So which one did we attack?

Why is Al-Qaida openly organizing in Iran now while we do nothing?

Why is it that between Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, The Phillipines, and Iraq that the BULK of our military efforts and money is diverted to the country that housed the least number of terrorists and where Al-Qaida couldn't be found? They're attacking innocents in the Phillipines. Re-organizing in Iran. Still in Afghanistan. Still drawing money from Saudis. But where do we put the bulk of our efforts?

It's insulting. And the UN? Irrelevant, except when we need to bug them for money or legitimacy or military support. Aside from then, they suck.

Thanks Micah, you saved me the bother.

Think about the Saudi connection, sorro. Think about the fact that it has been PROVEN that the Iraq/911/Al Qaeda connection is non-existent. Think about the fact that there are no WMD's. Think about the fact that Iraq was NO THREAT to the West. Think about the fact that what you call 'Terrorists' in relation to the continuing attacks on US soldiers, a lot of people would call 'People very very angry about having their country decimated by a pre-emptive carpet-bombing'. Think about how DANGEROUS this new US Imperialist mentality is. Your list of countries and what you, by implication, think should be done is frankly chilling, and serves as a perfect embodiment of what scares and disgusts a huge, cross-global majority. This isn't a left/right issue, sorro. Its a right/wrong issue. And what the US is doing in the world is so very, very wrong. As I've said before - you cannot win a War on Terror. There is no debate on this point. Take it from someone who has lived in a country rife with polarised terrorism for 30 years. You can, however, ham-fistedly and utterly ineptly instigate the single greatest terrorist recruitment drive in history. Good job.

I've thought about the Saudi connection. I know that Osama bin Laden is a product of their extreme Wahabbi Islam. I know that they fund the Madrassas (sic?) that breed extremists. I know that, sooner or later, we are going to have to deal with the Saudis if we ever want to get rid of militant Islamic terrorism. However, I do know that the Saudis have us over the proverbial barrel. We have to have their oil to function as a society, and if we disrupt that supply right now, our war machine will stop in the middle of their desert (or, if we were using soft power, our society would cave before they would in the face of 1973-style lines for gas). However, if we can find alternate sources (fuel cells, Russian crude, ANWR crude, future Iraqi crude) to reduce that reliance to a level where we can deal with them, then I am all for that, and as soon as possible. I've criticized the Saudis as much as anyone on the boards, and I don't think that they are our friends, or someone that should be trusted. However, to get to them we have to shore up our weak point, oil. Until that point, they've got us nailed.

As far as the "proven" non-existant WMDs or al Qaeda connection, I haven't seen anything that has definitively said that is the case. Sure, we can brush off the Weekly Standard article (and other pieces of evidence, including the Czech connection that they STILL haven't denied), but by the same token we can brush off other evidence saying that there is no connection/WMD. The fact is that every nation on the planet thought Saddam had WMDs before we invaded. That was never something that the French, Russians, Germans, or Chinese debated. Instead, they said that the inspectors should be given more time. Seeing as how everyone knew (looking back, it should probably be revised to "thought") that Saddam had WMD, why is not finding them proof that Bush just wanted a war? The head of Saddam's nuclear program defected and told the world that Saddam was trying to get nuclear weapons. His son-in-law defected and led inspectors to a large number of documents detailing how Saddam was deceiving the inspectors and he really did have CW and BW, and was trying to get NW. These facts are already proven. When the UN left in 1998, Saddam still hadn't accounted for all of the WMD that he documented in things that the inspectors found. That being the case, whether or not there were WMD, attacking Iraq at the time was justified based on WMD (that, again, everybody had said were there).

As far as how wrong pre-emptive defense is, you may see it as wrong, but I see it as smart. Appeasement will not work. If you show that, as a nation, you'll just take a hit and move on, then you'll be consistently attacked by people making demands on your nation. That is one of the bedrock principles of US hostage negotiation. If you give in, then you open yourself up to all kinds of hurt. It's one of the lessons of World War II. To appease Hitler, the European community gave him whatever he wanted, and it still didn't stop a war. In fact, history has shown that, had France and England stood up to Hitler in 1936 when he remilitarized the Rhineland, he would have backed down. Peace through strength isn't just a nice saying, it is a fact of world politics. So we take non-appeasement to the next level. In reality, pre-emptive defense is a misnomer, because to a great degree it is just 25 years of payback. With the exception of North Korea, every single one of those groups have attacked the United States after 1980. We took the hit, moved on, and it emboldened other groups to take the war to us. By calling these accounts due, we are sending a message that we will not take it any more. While in the short term this pre-emptive policy may, and indeed probably has, invited more terrorism, over the long run it reduces it by actually changing the very foundations of terrorism, which is the fundamental problem with the whole Northern Ireland issue - nobody truly addressed the roots of the problem.

This might wash HAD we not called them "friends" as we were striking at Afghanistan in response to 9/11. If we were not still coverin their every move by blacking out reports that don't paint them as angels in the Middle East.

Clearly, our current admin has no real interest in weaning us off the Saudi teat. Hydrogen cell automotive technology? Oh, sure Bush gave it lip service in an address, but where's the federal funding for it? Renewable sources? Yeah, right. It's a joke.



All that's proven is that head them at SOME POINT. Not currently. Not still had them. But had the weapons AT SOME POINT, which means...nothin since all we did during the periods they had the weapons, was purchase MORE oil from them in the UN Oil-for-food program.

Besides your argument of "Well, we may not have proof of X, but we didn't have definitive proof that X was NOT true either" is flawed. America still operates on "innocent until proven guilty," which apprently is a standard only Americans deserve. In the world court, our motto is "Well, you didn't see him prove that he did NOT do X, so let's execute him and we'll wait until the autopsy to do a thorough investigation."



DEFENSE?

Against what? An army we beat inside of 2 months? Outdated weapons we sold them years ago? Terrorists operatin in OTHER countries that we're scared to do anything about?

Nor have we. Middle East terrorism is a direct result of our meddlin in their countries' affairs for years, so we MEDDLE MORE in response?

Also, the "appeasement" argument? Old and full of holes. Thoroughly inspecting a country's weapons non-stop is NOT appeasement. Verifying the ones that get destroyed and sending Task Force 20 in to gather further high-level intel? NOT appeasement. Besides, you contradict yourself by acknowledging our appeasement of the Saudis. And Iran - where Al-Qaida is organizing AND the people are screamin for regime change. And North Korea, who continues to build their nuclear arsenal.

In fact, we are sending the wrong message. We're delivering clear exceptions where we will NOT invade - and with nuclear weapons being one of them - EVERY country that could face action from us is now scrambling to get one, hence the North Koreans trying to sell them off to the highest bidder and all of the enriched uranium and plutonium "disappearing" from old Soviet stores.

What a solid policy.

Does everything need federal funding? GM is working on a fuel cell car that could revolutionize the auto industry, and this is without federal subsidies. I don't recall Henry Ford asking the President and Congress for money to fund his internal combustion motor carriage.

Nevertheless, I think you are right that the government (remember, Congress controls the pursestrings - even if Bush didn't request fuel cell/hydrogen car money, they could put it in a bill, and he'd still pass it. Instead, we throw our money away on ethanol) doesn't care about moving to hydrogen power. This is something that the blame can be spread to everyone on, not just Republicans and not just Democrats.
Would you have had the Iraqi people starve because we didn't want to buy Iraqi oil? Instead all of that money that the UN used for medicine and supplies could have gone to Saddam for his black market oil.
As far as the innocent until proven guilty thing, we (as the general public) don't know fully what intelligence was used to justify our attack. We know what was told to us, but certainly not the whole story, and perhaps not even a small part of the story. Who knows what's in the top secret, eyes only, delta level files, besides those who are cleared for that data? We didn't know a good part of what happened during the Cold War until 50 years after the fact, and there's still things that happened that we don't know about. Perhaps we aren't giving intelligence because every single time we do, and our enemies in the world hear about it, they make things that much harder for us to track them. Think Orrin Hatch after Sept 11, saying Osama did it. With just a slip of the tongue, he hurt us quite a bit. Because we found out by cell phone chatter, and al Qaeda figured it out, we lost our ability to easily track people in the al Qaeda network. Why should we give that information away if it will compromise our ability to defend ourselves?
You're right, sending the message that we will not invade if you have nuclear weapons is about the worst thing we can do. North Korea is the best example of this, but I think Iran is in a different boat. I think the US is trying to psy-op the people into a revolution against the ayatollah, and I think it's working. The only question is if it will work quickly enough. If it doesn't, then we will be in trouble when Iran gets nukes and we then have to deal with a nuclear Islamic fringe state. I can definitely see both sides of the coin on N. Korea - you don't want 8 million dead S. Koreans in Seoul, 23 million dead Japanese in Tokyo, or 6 million dead Americans in LA, but you have to have a credible deterrent against nuclear weapons. That's a very tough one that I don't have the answer to right now.

Middle Eastern terrorism is more the result of the sundry governments in the region using the US as a scapegoat to protect themselves from the wrath of the people than it is a result of US meddling (with the possible exception of Iran).

Agreed. Daschle and his ethanol obsession is quite tiresome. BUT I just want a leader from either party to step up and make this a federal priority. Sure, private industry could change things on their own eventually. But the government pushing things toward new drilling and ethanol, among other non-renewable steps is making it that much harder. And where is our fuel efficiency?




Anything less than invading was subsidizing the gassing and brutality, which is why we had no moral authority to stop it this year. We helped make it possible.



Intelligence officials and hihg-level ambassadors around the world who, as I remember it, protested and (in some cases) RESIGNED prior to us invading because they felt this case was shoddy and full of holes. Also, we KNOW that Task Force 20 confirmed NO WMD could be found and Bush ignored it. That's a fact. We know that "facts" Bush referred to were long disproven. Facts.



That's a good question, but clearly we're not comprising our intelligence sources because we're not even acting on OBVIOUS Al-Qaida gatherings in places like Iran.

Iran isn't just a possibility. Our work on the Shah and the Ayatollah cemented our bad reputation there. Our favoritism toward Israel (and their brutal military practices) has helped to cement Arab support with Palestinian terror groups. Our leaving Iraq in a lurch when they needed us in 1991 has caused Iraqis to be wary of us and made our job now that much harder. Our half-assed support of Afghanistani "freedom fighters" has helped install many a local warlord as long as they agreed to fight Soviets.

This isn't us being a poor, innocent scapegoat. We took this shady path to try and defeat Communism, among other goals, and NOW we're paying the price and will continue to for many years. SOME President has got to wake up and try and repair this damage. Bombs don't make that happen. forceful "regime changes" don't make this happen. These are basic lessons we've yet to learn.

That paragraph gives me chills.

Blind faith in the government - in any government - to do the right thing, to assume they're acting intelligently and in our best interests, even if we don't deserve to know why...that's a scary, dangerous road. And it baffles me that some people can't see it.

Obviously, there's a need for secrecy when it comes to international politics. It's sad, but a fact of life. But it's the responsibility of the people - of patriots - to be watchful and ensure the neccesity for secrecy is not twisted into lack of accountability. And yet that's precisely what the US government is doing now. "Patriotism" should mean "love and devotion to one's country", not "unquestioning allegiance to the government".

Hard and important questions need to be answered, evidence mounts that the very foundation of the Iraq war and, by extension, American relations with the rest of the world is based on flimsy, flawed or just plain false information. And these answers are not forthcoming, even after the fact. Instead, sensible caution has been deliberately inflated into rampant paranoia, to the point where questions can be shouted down in the face of an invisible and omnipresent enemy. History is littered with examples of countries, nations and empires where this state of mind has been used to commit, conceal and exploit horrible, horrible mistakes.

I honestly wish you guys could see the US from where we lowly Rest Of The World inhabitants stand, rather than peering out from behind your barricades.

You're scaring us. Seriously.

You're on the money Dan.

Discussions on these boards scare me. The level of lemming-like blind acceptance in the US of what the Bush Regime is doing really is frightening.

Sorro, as I said above and have said many times in the past, I'm not going to start slinging personal insults - I have no doubt you're a pretty normal guy living a pretty normal life - but your ideaologies are symptomatic of a chilling school of thought - an ethos the world is staring at in disbelief. As Dan said, you should FEEL the resentment on this side of the world. Its palpable. I literally do not know one person who agrees in ANY WAY with what the US is doing.

Everything that is thrown your way, every question posed to you, you wriggle out of it. (are you a politician?

Wriggle out of this. Forgive me for paraphrasing -

Colin Powell - Egypt, February 2001
We have contained him (Saddam) utterly. His weapons programs are ineffectual. He is absolutely no threat to West, or his neighbours. Containment and sanctions have worked completely.

Colin Powell - UN Address 2002
He is armed to the teeth. Look, my Powerpoint Slideshow shows all sorts of crazy, fucked-up shit. Not only that, he is an imminent and boy oh boy do I mean IMMINENT threat to the US. Yup - he is positively bristling with weapons so unspeakable I'm not even going to mention them. He's gonna get us folks - unless we get him first.

ISG - 2003
Ummmmm......


Thoughts?

Remember, prior to the 1973 war, the US wasn't truly on the side of the Israelis. Their major supporter in 1948 and 1967 was the Soviets. Most of their American weapons (Patton tanks, etc) were captured from the Arab nations' armies that they overran. Even in 1973, Kissinger was hemming and hawing about helping the Israelis while the Soviets were running supplies 24/7 to the Arab nations. Nevertheless, I think that in the end we made the right decision to support them, seeing as how they could have been wiped out without our resupply efforts.

As far as Iraq 91 and Afghanistan, we screwed up big time. Bush 41 told the Iraqis to rise up and we would protect them - we didn't. When the Soviets left Afghanistan, we lost interest and left there too (also during Bush 41's administration), allowing groups like the Taliban to take control. I see both these cases as the United States making a halfway effort to do something. I really hope that Iraq doesn't end up the same way, because I do see some of the same kinds of things happening. I think that Bush 43 wants to do it right, but who knows about the rest of his administration.

Who's ISG?

As far as what Powell said, clearly they are two different ideas, however, I think that you are embellishing what he said a little bit. He did say Saddam was contained in 02-01, and he did say that Saddam was a threat and he had WMD and all that nasty stuff in 10-02. However, you take his remarks to be far more extreme than the actual speeches were.

I see this as a fundamental change in US foreign policy. If Bush had this innate desire to go in and take care of Daddy's unfinished business, Powell would have had the same hard line in early 2001 as he did in late 2002. Since that wasn't the case, I'll throw that out the window. The only thing then that could have changed the Bush administration's world view is September 11 (combined with the anthrax attacks afterwards). There is a clear disconnect between the way that Bush sounded before and after the attacks. Before he was an advocate of a more isolationist foreign policy, where we sit back in Fortress America and let the world deal with its problems without us, akin to US policy before Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, it changed to something far more active, where if we just sat back, we'd still get attacked. I don't know how much different the intelligence that Powell had was between these two times, but the major change that I see is that things that were once relatively benign (old chemical weapons, anthrax that wasn't accounted for, etc) didn't seem so benign anymore. If you add this to the attacks that Hussein had made and tried to make on the US since 1991 (involvement in the first attack on the WTC, attempted assasination of Bush 41, attempted hijacking of 15 jets over the Pacific), suddenly they saw us as very vulnerable to the unconventional attacks that had been tried before.

Let me be clear here. I, too, think Israel's PEOPLE need our support, but we should be just as hard on the overbrutal policing efforts of their government versus the Palestinians as we are on the Palestinian government for being lax on the militant terrorist elements amongst its people.

The ISG, sorro. The Iraq Survey Group. You know - the nearly 2000 people who scoured Iraq for months and turned up nothing but a few tenuous links to 'possible' programs? And a couple of jars in an Iraqi's fridge? Ringing any bells?

And I'm not embellishing Powell's words in the Egypt quote - granted I did in the UN quote becasue its so fucking hilarious to me I just had to. 'Simulated ANTHRAX!!!!' Eh...crop-duster, Colin?

Here is the actual quote, sorro. From http://www.state.gov/

"...the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq."

Embellish? Ahem. I think not.

"And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. "

Once more, with feeling.

"And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. "

And please, spare me the pre/post 9/11 SHITE. Go to http://www.newamericancentury.org - a site and a mandate in existence long before 9/11. A site which describes the need, again, long before 9/11, for a - quote - "catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor..." to galvanise its purpose. Who is behind the Project for the New American Century? Do I even need to tell you?

Conspiracy theory? I beg to differ. Its right there (as in right now) in black and white. A roadmap to a new American Imperialism and world domination. Which talked about a NEED for some cataclysmic event to set it in motion. And boy is it in motion. Fucking SICKENING.

Your denialism is so extreme I sometimes think you're taking the piss. Chillingly though, I actually know you aren't.

I'd never heard the people looking for WMD in Iraq referred to as the ISG or the Iraqi Survey Group. Thanks for the new information there.

I still don't see how you've disproved the pre/post 9/11 worldview argument. So the people at New American Century allowed this to happen to achieve their goals? Why would they need to when their statement of principles from 1997 is signed by Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney? Seeing as how all of those people are close to President Bush, don't you think he shared their world view? Otherwise, why would he have put Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz where he did? As far as the quote, which in the context you put it in sounds diabolical, if you put it back in context, they are saying that unless something major happens, people will feel that all is well in the US, and we don't need a bigger military - which is true.

I don't know who is "behind" PNAC, but they are hardly fringe, with highly respected Political Scientists like Francis Fukuyama and Eliot Cohen co-signing the statement of principles. While a lot of it reads like the Bush administration, these people are hardly a monolithic cabal of WASPs trying to dominate the planet. Let's take a look at some of their points in context:

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.


To me, these seem very reasonable. Even before Sept. 11 it would have been wise to do this. In fact, challenging regimes hostile to our values and strengtheing our ties to our democratic allies is an excellent idea. It gets us out of the Cold War mentality and could lead to a foreign policy that wouldn't be seen as so two-faced by many in the world. Nevertheless, Sept. 11 validated the neo-conservative argument to many people, and as a consequence you see the defense budget increasing and the US taking on a more active role in the world, rather than staying relatively isolationist.

Because Fukuyama has done work with RAND corp, and because Bill Kristol is chairman of PNAC as well as editor of the Weekly Standard, I guess RAND and News Corp are behind 9/11 and all this nastyness.

I don't think we should equate the two sides, but we should pressure Israel to stop using choppers and missiles to assassinate Hamas, Hizbollah, etc leaders, as they are overly brutal in the sense that they cause far too much collateral damage.

Some of us are trying, in some small way, to work on it. Spent a lot of time over Thanksgiving talking to reps in Austin and Houston (Rice University - woo-hoo!) that I volunteered with during my college days as well as people in Baltimore. Coordinating here in Los Angeles, as well. Will be taking time off to work on the Democratic campaign locally here - primarily in "get out the vote" programs (there's nothing Republicans hate more than high voter turn-out).

I've seen how "we" look to the rest of the world recently - in trips to Italy, Australia and Canada. I just wish that many of those people could see that "the US" is scaring the hell out of many of "us 'mericans," too.