Christopher's rantings and ravings

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Welcome to Christopher's website...

"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  - Benjamin Franklin
 
"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward." - FDR
 
"Rules are not necessarily sacred; principles are." - FDR
 
"Give me 64 Sammy Davis years over 128 Ken Starr years any day" - Bill Maher
 
"The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God." - Susan B. Anthony 
 
"Wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tubemen." - Seth MacFarlane
 
"It's one thing to die for your beliefs; it's quite another to die of your beliefs."

Well, I have never been so happy to be wrong! My optimism did grow as we approached the election, so in the end I believed we would pick up closer 22 seats in the House, though I still believed we would come up well short in the Senate. The result was, of course, far better: closer to 30 seats and a new (albeit razor-thin) majority in the Senate.

Unfortunately, my concerns remain: I believe, as I said below, that we won by default, not as a result of our values. We have yet to put forth a coherent policy agenda. Still, we have seen improvements and something like a platform seems to be taking shape now. We'll see how the next few months go....

 

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My final prediction for the mid-terms as of 22 October 2006:

House: 223 Republican, 212 Democrat

Senate: 51 Republican, 47 Democrat, 2 Independent

Governors: 28 Democrat, 22 Republican

Sadly, as you can see, I do not share my fellow Democrats' optimism regarding our chances for taking back even one house of Congress. There's been too much gerrymandering in recent years, so there is no competition anymore. We can win back Congress, but it will have to be over two or three election cycles, a few seats at a time.

Sadder still is the fact that my projection is based not just on the lack of competition, but also the lack of clear direction of our party. Even with the gerrymandering, this could have been the year if we had outlined clear goals for America's future, if we had offered something better that, 'Hey, we're not Bush!' We can't win - we don't deserve to win - if we can't give America a coherent alternative platform.

Another factor is what I call the 'Kerry factor': America proved in 2004 that she would rather have a fool for a leader than a man who won't stick up for himself, who isn't prepared to fight - and fight hard  - for victory. In a time of insecurity, no one wants to entrust our country's safety to people who are too high-minded to hit back when attacked. In other words, if you can't beat the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the logic seems to go, then you certainly can't handle a Kim Jong Il. Democrats are simply afraid to get their hands dirty, and for as long as that remains the case, even the most morally corrupt and reprehensible Republicans will stay on top.

I truly hope I am wrong and that we sweep to victory in November. Indeed, I can imagine a best-case scenario in which we squeak in with a one-seat majority in the House and get as high as even in the Senate (if both Inds. caucus with us), forcing Cheney to show up regularly to get Republican bills passed. But even if that happens, these underlying issues with our party will remain, because we will have won by default, not by values.

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No, sir, it is most certainly not legal

The Republican spin machine has kicked into overdrive, trying not just to convince us that warrantless domestic spying is not only legal, but that we should be grateful for it and that anyone who isn't is 'soft on terrorism'. They even take it one step further by falsely claiming that the Democrats are against all monitoring of Al Qaeda calls where on party is in the U.S. (Not one single Democrat has objected to such monitoring when a warrant is legally obtained.)

But let's skip all this bickering and cut to the chase:

Amendment IV to the Constitution of the United States of America

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

(emphasis added)

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The Firestone/Bridgestone 21 hour 40 minute workday

According to a recent report, Firestone employee worker contracts in Liberia are so demanding that, by a Firestone/Bridgestone executive's own admission, it would take the average worker almost 22 hours a day to complete the minimum contractual requirement if working alone. So of course, these impoverished workers do the only thing they can do: bring their whole families to work. Result? Child labor is being used to harvest the rubber sap used to make your tires. Firestone claims it prohibits child labor and will fire anyone using their families to help them fill their quotas, but Firestone/Bridgestone doesn't give any indications as to how a single worker is supposed to complete 22 hours of work a day seven days a week.

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YOU GET WHAT YOU VOTE FOR

American Problem: Thousands of handgun-related deaths a year, killing far more people than any 9/11-style attack. Glaring gun-show loop-holes helping to put weapons in the hands of criminals. Lapse of the popular assault-weapons ban.

Republican Solution: Pass laws to protect the gun industry from lawsuits.

American Problem: Aggressive marketing by credit-card issuers and other lenders to push credit on any- and everyone, with all the ethics of a schoolyard crack dealer. Excessive consumer debt amid huge creditor profits. 

Republican Solution: Help out the creditors by making bankruptcy even harder, pushing more burden onto consumers while increasing credit-issuers' already huge profits.

American Problem: Over-reliance on middle-east oil, scarce prospects for new oil sources, high consumption of destructive fossil fuels, lack of sufficient investment in alternative energy, all against a backdrop of record-high profits for the oil industry and soaring fuel prices.

Republican Solution: Tax-breaks for the oil industry.

American Problem: A Republican Congress whose sole constituents are its corporate masters.

American Solution: A new Congress.

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WHY NOT HERE?

Why don't we see military crackdowns in America? Why don't we see troops enforcing the will of a particular political camp? We take our liberty so for granted that we rarely ask these questions, and indeed the answers could literally fill volumes of text. But one answer is that we have done a very good job of keeping our military out of politics. Ever hear of a politician in America worrying about which divisions of the Marines or the Army support his candidacy? Sounds odd to Americans, but it's a major variable in the political math in other countries precisely because they haven't kept the military apolitical.

It hasn't always been easy for us, but in a country whose very desire for independence was in part based on British use of Redcoats as tools of suppression, we have a natural, healthy suspicion of the role of troops on home soil. In the wake of the Civil War, during Reconstruction, the military was sometimes used in very dangerous ways by local authorities in the still-chaotic South, prompting Congress to pass the Posse Comitatus Act. This act prohibits use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

Now Congress is rethinking that act after Katrina. It certainly would have been useful to have active-duty troops moving in quickly to help with evacuations, police the abandoned areas and prevent looting. In that light, it may indeed be wise to revise Posse Comitatus, but we should be very careful about just how far we go. I for one would support a provision allowing the executive to waive Posse Comitatus, but only in times and places of natural disasters, and with specific prohibitions regarding any other use.

At a time when America is more divided than any time since at least the Vietnam War, and quite possibly since the Civil War, it would be very ill-advised of Congress to give too much free rein to the military on U.S. soil. Civil wars, coups, military influence on politics: these sound like the issues of far-away places or long-passed eras. If we're careful and wise, they will remain that way.

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FAIR'S FAIR

My goodness, Bush took responsibility for a mistake over the Katrina fiasco. Well, you can't criticize if you're not willing to point out the good stuff, too. In Bush's case, that's not a rule I have to recall very often. But I have to give him credit: he finally found some humility and admitted a mistake. I don't suppose he'll admit all the lies, corruption and mistakes with Iraq. One step at a time.

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DIRTY POOL

What's the great thing about terrifying events like 9/11 and Katrina? People who thrive on fear get away with murder. America was so shaken up by the former event, most citizens didn't blink an eye as we took another step away from democracy. Now, those keen on taking advantage of a bad situation are trying to gut Davis-Bacon, the 1930s legislation that forced federal contractors to pay their workers the prevailing wages in the areas where their work is done. Republicans are now suspending it in the name of helping the Gulf Coast rebuild. Yeah, nothing like increasing poverty to help a region get back on its feet. Anyone want to take bets on who sees the real loss? Workers or the corporate bottom line? Gee, I wonder. I'm going to take a wild guess: wages down, profits up.

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TIME LINE O' GREATNESS

27 August: Katrina forms and starts its course for the Gulf Coast; Dubya's still hanging out in Crawford.

28 August: Katrina heading for the coast; Dubya still enjoying week five of his vacation.

29 August: Katrina hits; Dubya goes to Arizona for one of his well-scripted, no-opposition-allowed 'town hall meetings'.

30 August: The levees break, disaster consumes the Gulf Coast; Dubya goes a little farther in the opposite direction, to San Diego, where he hangs out with a country singer.

1 September: New Orleans drowns; Dubya does 'Good Morning America', where he claims no one could have foreseen an event that experts and journalists had been warning for years was inevitable.

2 September: New Orleans all but destroyed; Dubya jokes about his fun times in New Orleans, CONGRATULATES the incompetent FEMA director on a job well done, and mourns the destruction of....Senator Lott's mansion.

Ah, now that's leadership.

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THE LYING GAME

Everyone from the Homeland Security Secretary to military and emergency officials is trying to cover his ass by saying no one could have known about or expected a hurricane like Katrina. Bullshit. Scientists and engineers have been warning of EXACTLY the kind of hurricane that has devastated the Gulf Coast. Even the local paper, the Times-Picayune, described a Katrina-like hurricane and its consequences in detail just three years ago, even as the Bush administration was diverting money away from emergency planning and levee maintenance to pay for its adventures elsewhere.

And as the city drowned, the Bush administration did what it knows best: it lied. It lied about feeding the refugees in the Superdome. (Hey, maybe they'll cover for us and tell everyone they really are getting two meals a day!) It lied about the ability to get into the city. (Yeah, Wal-mart and Harry Connick, Jr. can get in, but the military and relief workers can't.) It lied about, well, pretty much everything.

How can a government expect people to believe such easily discovered lies? Simple: they're used to it. There were plenty of fools around to believe the fabrications about Iraq, plenty of fools around to believe the lies about the budget and the economy, plenty to believe no-bid, hyper-inflated contracts for the VP's ex-employer were just coincidence, and plenty to believe the lies about Kerry. (Hell, I should know: several of those fools are related to me!) When people lap up your lies and come back wanting more, the sky's the limit.

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HMMM...

Hmmm....Clinton's head of FEMA was an experienced state emergency manager.  Bush's choices: the first, Allbaugh, an old buddy with no experience in emergency management, a political crony who had been a Bush-Cheney campaign manager; the second, Brown: an old college buddy of the first, a former attorney, also no experience in emergency management, whose last professional experience was managing an association of owners and breeder of Arabian horses. And this cronyism-over-competence policy shows. The current director was quoted as saying on 1 September: "Unfortunately, [the high death toll is] going to be attributable to a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings." I guess Republican politicos forget that in a city that has tens of thousands of families living in poverty, not everyone can take a private jet to their summer homes when disaster strikes. See, when you're too poor to afford a car and FEMA is too incompetent to have an evacuation plan in place before a disaster that experts having been calling unavoidable for decades now, you just don't deserve to live as far as the Bush administration is concerned. Ah, true-blue, Republican, Christian values. Where would America be without them?

By the way, what's ex-director Allbaugh up to these days? Maybe FEMA couldn't get into Louisiana, but he sure could: as a professional lobbyist, he made a bee-line for the state to hawk the wares and services of his clients to cash in on the disaster. I know it will come as a shock to hear that among his clients is Halliburton.

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LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE REAL VICTIM

I think the real victim of Katrina is George Bush. After all, this president has only had a paltry ELEVEN MONTHS OF VACATION since taking office and the thousands of deaths and billions in destruction in the American south-east forced the poor guy to cut short his latest holiday. We can at least be thankful that it didn't inconvenience him too much: for the first few days of the disaster, he stuck to his schedule of political stumping and photo ops.

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SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

"That footage depicts something very different from a vegetative state." - Republican Sen. Frist, Senate floor, 17 March 2005, speaking of footage of Terry Schiavo.

"I never made the diagnosis, never said that she was not [in a persistent vegetative state]." - Sen. Frist, "Good Morning America" (ABC), 16 June 2005, after the autopsy of Schiavo had shown she had been severely brain-damaged.

"[Sen. Byrd's comments comparing Republican tactics to Hitler's tactics] lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate." - Republican Sen. Santorum, March 2005.

"How dare you break this rule, it is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying: I’m in Paris, how dare you invade me, how dare you bomb my city. It’s mine." - Sen. Santorum, Senate floor, 19 May 2005, regarding debate on filibuster rule-change.

No comment needed...

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FREE TRADE....EXCEPT WHEN IT INCONVENIENCES US

Free trade for all! Well, not in agriculture because our big agribusiness buddies can't do without all those yummy subsidies. Oh, and not in textiles, because it's one of the few areas in which developing countries have a real advantage. And, umm...well, free trade as long as it makes us rich countries richer.

Unlike a lot of my colleagues on the left, I believe free trade is not only good, but inevitable.....but only when tempered by a sense for fair trade. If we continue with our hypocrisy (and in this case by 'our' I mean that of all the Western countries, not just the U.S.), the developing countries will revolt, as they have already begun to do. (Think Cancun 2003.)

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BUSH TO ROGUE NATIONS: WANT TO AVOID INVASION? BUILD WMDs.

NK's got 'em. The dictatorship in Pakistan's got 'em. Iran is working on 'em. Syria is test-firing 'em. I am, of course, talking about WMDs...and just to clarify, I mean actual WMDs, not the imaginary ones we went to war over. And our reaction to these four rogue nations? Nada. Zilch. Zip. So if I'm a dictator afraid of Bush's cowboy antics, the message I hear is very clear: hurry up and build them and you won't be invaded. Nice. I'm sure the free countries of the world feel safer with that policy in place.

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UMM, HUH?

Referring to his threat to veto a stem-cell research bill, Bush said on 20 May 2005, "I made very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life, I'm against that." Here we ago again with 'culture of life', but help me out here, Dubya! The president supports the death penalty as a means of deterring crime and stopping criminals from killing again. In short, he supports the state spending money to 'destroy life in order to save life.' I'm confused, especially since the death penalty is lethal to actual humans (including mentally retarded ones and minors, not to mention some who were innocent of their alleged crimes), while stem cell research uses embryos that are NEVER destined to be brought to term anyway. But maybe I'm missing something....? Or maybe the president is a hypocrite. You decide.

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SLACKTIVISM

Not sure where I first heard this expression, 'slacktivism', but it's the perfect word to describe what so many people are doing these days. Let's get something straight, people: signing a bunch of online petitions and holding up the occasional placard accomplishes precisely one thing: making you feel better about yourself. It doesn't change the world. It doesn't feed a single child, save a single acre of a rainforest or spare us a single milligram of pollution. Sign all the petitions you want - I've been known to sign one or two myself - but don't delude yourself into thinking it will accomplish much. You want to accomplish something? Drive less, give to the charity of your choice, conserve/reuse/recycle resources, help your neighbor, vote in every election. In short, be a good citizen.

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CONGRESS TO WOMEN: YOU ARE INFERIOR

I've always considered myself a 'realistic feminist'. I reject the non-sense of extremists who demean women by pretending they are the same as men (how insulting!), as well as the equally inane non-sense of sexists who maintain that the differences mean women are inferior. Women and men are different and anyone who can't see that is delusional. But these differences make us both stronger.

Congress has decided to send the message that these differences actually make us weaker. They are set to approve a bill that would make it illegal for women in the armed forces to serve in combat positions. Our nation's security will see its potential pool of defenders cut in half. And why? To stroke the egos of male soldiers and kow-tow once again to the extreme right.

As I said above, I am a realist in these matters. Ceteris paribus, females are smaller and weaker than males. But what is true on the aggregate clearly does not hold for all individual comparisons. You can easily assemble a group of women and men and find cases where a given female is stronger than a given male. In other words, if you had to choose between an all-male army and an all-female army, you'd be wise to choose the former; but if you had to choose between two individual soldiers, one a 5'8", overweight, male desk-jockey and the other a 5'10", physically-fit, athletic female, do you really want the former? I say hold all combat positions to the exact same criteria for strength, endurance and fitness for both sexes and let's get the best soldiers we can. Biology and common sense tell you that such a fighting force will remain mostly male, but why shut the door to qualified females just to make some insecure men and bible-thumpers happy? It is irrational and foolish and it reduces our security. Give the poor guys SUVs...that always seems to help them feel compensated for their frail egos!

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HUBRIS AND HISTORY

The Republicans are threatening the so-called 'nuclear option', changing Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster, a mechanism that allows a minority (40 senators) to block voting on an issue. This will be remembered as the point at which Republicans finally forgot that holding a majority is not a permanent state of affairs...not to mention the point at which they seem to have been struck with amnesia.

From Nixon to Clinton, the filibuster was used a total of 34 times, 13 times on judicial nominees, 21 on executive nominees. And the scorecard? Wait for it....wait for it.....26 OF THE 34 WERE REPUBLICAN FILIBUSTERS. And poor President Bush, 'victim' of the recent filibustering: he has enjoyed a success rate of over 95% in getting nominees approved. That's higher than Clinton, Bush I and Reagan ever saw.

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WELCOME TO AMERICA!

Welcome to the USA of the 21st century! Mississippi has revoked fractions and Kansas seems determined to revoke evolution. (Of course, given their logic, one may argue they have at least defied evolution.) We have Republicans, including at least one Senator, inciting violence against judges. Texas is passing laws against cheerleading they deem too sexy. Religion is being used to enforce political conformity and those who resist are rejected as unworthy of worshiping. Does any of this sound familiar?!?! America has its own Taliban: anti-rational, theocratic, oppressive, dangerous.

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LIBERAL HERESY

This is the ultimate liberal heresy: agreeing with Bush. I have looked at all the alternatives and all the futuristic possibilities and have come to the conclusion that nuclear power might be a smart idea in the medium term. Yes, that's right: a liberal in favor of nuke plants. We are fighting wars and damaging our economy for oil while hydrogen, wind and solar are still at least two decades away from being practical for large-scale energy generation. Meanwhile, we have nuclear energy, which is arguably the safest, cleanest alternative in the foreseeable future. I say build 'em.

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STOP KIDDING OUR KIDS

What is a gateway drug? Marijuana? More likely to be tobacco or alcohol. Track 'hard' drug (heroin, coke, etc) users and ask them what they have used. You are more likely to find they have smoked cigarettes or drunk than that they have used pot.

Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has proven medicinal purposes. Chemo patients using pot are less likely to feel nausea and loss of appetite as a result of their treatment, for example. This has been proven in studies dating back to the early '70s....unlike the 'proven' benefits of alcohol, which are negligible even in the most optimistic studies.

According to JAMA (2000): 435,000=estimated number of people dying each year from tobacco in the U.S. and 85,000=people dying from alcohol. Number dying from marijuana? No one has ever died from O.D.'ing on 'jane. It is not physically possible.

The money we spend in the U.S. every year on the 'drug war' would be enough to reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 10%.

In 1978, the U.S. started a federally-funded program to investigate medicinal uses of marijuana. Since 1992 (as a result of Bush Sr.'s re-election move), however, the Feds have stopped the program and refused to study the benefits. Interestingly, though, they still provide pot to seven people per the original contract. (At its height, 30 people were on the program.) One of these seven has spoken out about the benefits for his bone disease.....but don't expect to hear any studies backing up his claim....not since we've declared war on it.

700,000=number of pot-smokers arrested every year. These are non-violent offenders. Our last two presidents are the lucky ones, never arrested and sentenced for this crime. We spend over a billion a year imprisoning these people, people who have done less harm to themselves and others than drinkers and smokers.

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JAPAN V. CHINA

Everything seems so black and white, but international relations are anything but. Mean ol' China beating up on Japan? Dishonest Japan, unwilling to face her past, being brought to book by China? Neither and both. Japan, unlike Germany, never owned her past, never taught her children the evils done in the name of king and country. For that, the Chinese are rightly outraged. But don't kid yourself: the timing of these protests is a self-serving act by the Chinese authoritarians. They needed to open a pressure valve at a time when their citizens are seeing protests and peaceful revolution around the world. To avoid another PR disaster like '89, they are using Japan as an excuse, a way to let young Chinese vent their anger and frustration without jeopardizing the role of the ruling class. In short, both sides are guilty and both sides are right.

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VOTERS

Interesting new survey, albeit not a surprising one. Least likely Republican voter: black woman, union-member, aged 18-29, single, no significant private investments. Most likely: Southern, married, white male, income 50-75k, considers himself a member of the 'investor class', over 30. (Ironic...I fit that profile myself, except being married and the income bracket, the latter being close enough.)

Less obvious detail: we need to rebuild ourselves among Hispanics. We are losing ground there, mostly for reasons of social issues. Wouldn't hurt, too, for Fidel to die and resolve Cuba as an issue in Florida.

The most important issue that comes out of this survey is turn-out. Until we get blacks and the under-30 crowd to come out in stronger numbers, we're doomed. Perhaps it's time to stop pandering to the Grey Panthers and look to our real base, which means addressing education, drug decriminalization, prison reform, a fairer and more humane welfare system and healthcare.

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Pope John Paul II

Just a quick note to mark the passing of a great man. As both an atheist and a liberal, I would be hard pressed to come up with many things on which I could agree with the pope and many of his pronouncements I found down right offensive. But he was a man of peace, a man who loved all humans and a man of conviction, and that must always be respected and honored.

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Ends and Means

If I had to boil down the Bush administration to a single aphorism, it would be, 'The ends justify the means'. It's OK to lie about or conceal past drug use, because if you don't, Timmy might make the incredible leap that he should use drugs, too. (I wonder if Timmy will be better off as a drug-free but amoral liar.) It's OK to invade a country based on lies, half-truths and shoddy intelligence as long as the end, democracy, is good. It's fine to corrupt the Fourth Estate as long as you believe the end, promoting your agenda, is virtuous. Is this the new American morality?

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Damn Yankees

Report from the culture wars: I am a rare breed: a liberal white Southern male. Other liberals would therefore do well to heed my advice. Stop panning the 'red states' as redneck wastelands of ignorance and backwardness. It is a self-defeating, arrogant stance that is pushing more and more people to the right. If we want to win back places like the South, we need to get off our high-horses and show a little humility.

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NO!

Why is that in the last few years all we can say on the left is, 'No!'? No to free trade, no to insurance companies, no to SS reform of any kind, no to, well, everything! We will not regain political power by just saying, 'no'! We must have a positive agenda of our own. Few people vote for an opposition that only knows how to oppose. They seek alternative LEADERSHIP. What happened to ideas? What happened to creating alternatives? I am sick of the whining and bitching on the left. If all you can say is 'no', then remain silent. PROPOSE AN ALTERNATIVE! I have a very clear vision for my country. Is it the right one? Maybe, maybe not. But if you object, then propose something else. Don't just whine about others'!