“The
real battle for the soul of America
“Mitt
Romney likes to say that this election is a battle for “the soul of America.” He’s right — just not in
the way that he thinks.
“Romney
asserts that President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform America,”
turning the country “into a European-style entitlement society.” In
fact, Romney and his Republican presidential rivals have a far more radical
transformation in mind. They envision a dramatically shrunken federal
government and a dangerously unraveled social safety net…”
Cassi
Creek: We’re going to be screwed by the
GOP/teavangelists/theocons once again.
They’re going to finish outsourcing every possible job to their
sweatshops/factories in the third world.
They’re going to use the same strategy that has worked so well since
Nixon’s southern strategy, inflaming the working class voters who once had jobs
and belonged to unions by coaxing them into voting yet again for the lackeys of
the people who shipped their jobs offshore and who own the financial houses
that foreclosed on their homes. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and
unemployment insurance benefits are all in the sights to be blown out of the
present world by men who want to roll the calendar back to the days when
Vanderbilts, Rockerfellers, and other robber barons traveled by private rail
car on railroads they owned.
The people talking most loudly about
the “soul of America” are the people who want to own that soul and the soul of
everyone who can be convinced to listen to them. They will happily equate social safety nets
with “European socialism” and ignore the massive amounts of money being
stripped from the pockets of working class by the religious charlatans who were
fed evangelical Christianity from birth by the corporate churches and the
robber barons who own them.
There may be some hope this year that
the working class will realize that they are voting for their own
destruction. If the GOP candidates
continue to shred each other publically, they may provide the working class and
the former middle class with enough incentive to look beyond the church pews
and the AM talk radio jocks. We can
only hope.
Also of deep concern, the behavior of
our troops in Afghanistan.
We don’t
support the Geneva Accords to make the enemy happy. We support and enforce their criteria for
behavior on and around battlefields for the safety and proper treatment of our
troops if they are captured, if they are wounded and captured, and if they are
killed and their remains fall into enemy hands.
While the Taliban irregulars are not members of a uniformed force, it is
in our best interest to treat them as if they are, either alive or dead.
I have no trouble knowing how I would
respond to images of Americans KIA being treated as we have done the irregulars
in the now famous images. Therefore, I
have no difficulty knowing how the families, friends, and squad mates of those
Taliban are responding to the pictures.
There is no acceptable excuse for the
actions of our Marines. They have made it much less likely that our
troops, if captured, will be treated appropriately. If I were one of them facing capture, I’d
save the last bullet for myself.
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