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Sept. 17, 2004 It has gotten to the point where every sphincter in my body clenches when I open up the writing of the so called “conservatives” in this place. The affectation of a professorial tone and the trying to explain a world view that is not only incomprehensible but inexplicable is beyond the pale. Not only of good manners but also of the moral code they say they represent. It has been said that President Bush won the election and the rest of us should get over it; that is a prevarication. The Supreme Court gave him the election because the media was sweating the wait; breathlessly eschewing patience for a headline. The Court intervened where it had no place or constitutional right. If anything the election should have gone to the House of Representatives where it is implied that the peoples chamber would make decisions of that nature. Also it has been said the previous administration of Bill Clinton was the most corrupt seen in one pundit’s study of history. It must not have been an extensive study because if there was corruption in Clinton’s administration it pales by comparison to Grant’s. But that is history and not as relevant to today as what is happening in this administration. It has been laid at the feet of one of our more liberal writers that she accused Bush of running a dictatorship, the conservative looked down the nose and explained to the rest of us that congress runs the country and that President Bush is an innocent victim of that congress. This may be true to an extent but apparently not when elections that we should get over are hanging in the balance and not when the PRESIDENT ISSUES AN EXECUTIVE ORDER . “Executive orders are official documents, numbered consecutively, through which the President of the United States manages the operations of the Federal Government. The text of Executive orders appears in the daily Federal Register as each Executive order is signed by the President and received by the Office of the Federal Register. The text of Executive orders beginning with Executive Order 7316 of March 13, 1936, also appears in the sequential editions of Title 3 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).”(my bold) http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/ Once published in the Federal Register the executive order has the weight of law. It’s that simple. For example the Department of Homeland security was established not by congress after discussion but by the president through executive order. Since the Truman administration, the use of executive orders has increased because a sitting president prefers to circumvent or not work with an increasing partisan, fractious congress. Another sphincter clenching moment is when I read of the need for Tort reform in this nation and how it is the lawyers that drive up health care costs. I am sorry but it is the Insurance industry, the Pharmaceutical industry and the Health Care industry and the need to make profit for their share holders which drive up costs. What those who advocate tort reform are saying is that if a patient is abused or suffers at the hands of these for profit companies they should just live with it. Doctors insurance premiums are so high not because of litigation but because a few doctors practice such a foul level of medicine that they harm more patients than they heal; just like every other time a business gets into the red; when the Insurance industry has to pay a claim out they do not take it from the shareholders, they add to the premiums paid by the customers. Insurance lobbies in this country are far and away bigger and better funded than any lobby representing members of the bar. And…uhhh, no I am not an attorney and the only attorney even distantly related to me defends Doctors in malpractice suits. That’s how he gets paid. And still another thing I have read here is that President Bush is not responsible for the loss of life in Iraq, neither the loss of life of American sons and daughters nor the loss of life of Iraqi civilians. I beg to differ; Bush started the war by overthrowing a legal government. Whether we agreed with the style or philosophy of that government is irrelevant to the legal status of it. When Bush chose to invade, that’s right invade, not liberate but invade Iraq, he took for himself and us the people he leads the responsibility for everything that happened after. He wanted to conquer Iraq and the death that results from that desire is HIS and our responsibility. An article here said something to the effect that no matter how many are killed it will not equal the numbers murdered by the Hussein regime. I say that while the Hussein regime was brutal, it was an Iraqi problem and not an American one. That if the people of Iraq were too terrified to overthrow him who tormented them; they then tacitly agreed that the way they lived was the best way for them. It was their lack of will to save themselves that allowed Saddam Hussein to rule for thirty years. What if them who lived under King George 250 years ago in this nation had felt the same way? Who would have stepped in to “liberate the Americans of the day? Maybe the French and that is a big maybe and they would have done it to hold North America for themselves. We, up until the time that this president decided to invade Iraq, had always allowed nations self determination that did not include our direct intervention. Yes we took over the Philippines in the 19th century and yes we took Guam as a protectorate, but the dictator Stalin we left alone, the dictator Pol-Pot we left alone and just about every other dictator that practiced their heinous form of government within their borders we left alone. (Noriega of Panama was the exception but that was an invasion to prove to him that he never should have taken our money and not deliver the services he was being paid for…that incident was sort of a military and rock and roll changing of the “tort” laws.) So what made Iraq different? It has been shown that although he had the desire for Weapons of Mass Destruction he had no capability to make them. I have said it before and I say it again he was paper tiger that the conservatives now and forever will point to as the cause of American military and Iraqi civilian deaths. What utter misleading lies that is? Our president and us, by being Americans, we are reserve to ourselves the responsibility for those deaths; we opened the door to the influx of them who now fight us on the streets of Iraq. There were no Saudi militants, Yemeni militants, Jordanian Militants or other militants practicing in Iraq before we deposed what had been the legal government in Iraq. And yet another sphincter clenching moment is when someone says the loss of American lives in Iraq validates the loss of them who died in the World Trade Center bombings. That is insane; absolutely, utterly nuts to think that death in war validates death in war. That idea only propagates more war. What validates the loss of life is life. A life well lived repudiates the desire of them who would throw the world back to the stone age and have us all live under the barbarism that they choose to follow. Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other proponents of non-violence proved that the way to overcome evil is with good. As a matter of fact I believe that Jesus makes it into that list of victory through peace. Yet apparently it is too hard of a concept to wrap the collective mind around even though intellectually we all know that answering violence with violence begets more violence, hell even Osama bin Laden knows this; but violence is his goal. So who achieved their objective…us….or him? So please dear fellow writers of political essays try more to dazzle me with facts, not opinion or distortion because I really am feeling the pressure from clenched sphincters. ------------ About the author: Mark Durfee is a free thinker who is swayed by logic and truth not ideology and deception. Email: mcd5255@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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