11:49 a.m. - 2004-10-14
my current political views
OK, so everyone seems to be ramping up their blogs to focus on...Decision 2004.
I can't keep my mouth shut, though I've tried because everyone got so antsy the last time I dusted off the soap box. Wait, what's that? I'm always on a soap box, you say? Come one, that's not true...well...this is my taller soapbox.
Please do not vote for George Bush. I know he's got that cute little squinty eyed smile. I know that sometimes it looks like he's telling the truth. I know he says he loves Jesus. I think he probably does. But he's gotten us into a gigantic mess in the middle east, resulting in well over a thousand American deaths (and please, PLEASE don't forget the 19 year old kids who are coming back with there limbs missing, their faces disfigured by burns and a lifetime of suffering and disability ahead of them.) Over 10,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (according to www.iraqibodycount.net).
I'm not saying there may have been legitimate reasons to invade Iraq. If done well, it could have (maybe still will?) provide some stability and introduce democracy into the Middle East. Maybe?
HOWEVER:
THe reasons we were told we were going was NOT TRUE.
This war is almost certainly destabilizing the middle east, and is almost certainly raising up young Iraqi boys who saw their mother's heads get blown off by American troops. Where the hell do you think terrorists come from? Not all of them, of course. But if I were Al Quaida's head marketing/recruiting exec, my target market would be young Iraqi boys who suffered greatly at the hands of the Americans. What better material to start with to nurture and train kamakazee killers?
One more thing. Christian Shmistian. That's what I think about this relationship between the republicans and the christians. Wake up folks. Let's dust off our bibles for a moment. When I look at the character of Christ, I see someone who advocated for the poor, and was a proponent of peace and forgiveness. I do not see these qualities in our current president.
While i am certainly no expert on homeland security, it seems to me that creating enemies of relatively powerful countries is pretty dangerous. While France is never going to attack us, it isn't beyond the scope of reality to imagine them and many others looking the other way if and when the next thing happens. I know we think we're big and tough and the most powerful military in the world. But look at what's happening right now. We can't even get in there and tame a little baby sized country like Iraq after a year and thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars spent.
Do you realize how expensive this war is? Do you realize how much money is NOT being directed toward underresourced people? Are you ok wiht people NOT eating or learning to read so we can kill more Iraqis and take control of theeir oil? I'm not saying I know for sure we never ever should have attempted to oust Saddam Hussein. But in this way, for these reasons, at this time, when our country was a nation of shell shocked people, desperately looking to our leadership to DO something...it just isn't right. It's manipulation and lies.
No Child Left Behind. This sort of sounds like a good idea. But here's how it plays out from what I've heard from a number of teachers. The schools have to have a certain number of students pass these tests at a certain level. If they don't, the school loses money. The purpose of it is to test where each child is at, and essentially penalize schools which are not meeting the standards. In theory, I can see how that makes some sense. EXCEPT: teachers are forced to teach what is going to be on the test and focus purely on getting these students to know the answers to these tests. NO time for creative, fun learning. NO time to teach critical thinking skills. While there is absolutely a lot of trouble in the education system of kids falling through the cracks, perhaps the WORST thing you can do is to take the responsibility and control out of the hands of the teachers. This program is basically saying that teachers can't be trusted to identify and/or help students who are struggling. Limiting the ownership and removing the teacher's individual approach is likely to take a lot of the passion and desire to help kids from the primary individuals who interface with the students. Particularly in inner city (and rural) underfunded schools, which often are associated with behavioral problems, lack of attendance, kids being below reading level, problems at home, etc., there is tremendous pressure to teach to the tests, so that funding is not taken away. This limits a teacher's ability to form individualized relationships with the students, which in many cases is what ends up "sparking" a student who was formerly disinterested, propelling them toward a more successful experience in education. This program was put forth, promising money to be sent toward schools that were failing and needed help....but the funding was reduced (almost certainly because of the war) and there aren't enough resources to accomplish what was supposed to happen in the first place...identify kids who were below grade level and get them help.
This lack of follow through and short sightedness seems to be characteristic of this administration. Are there problems with John Kerry? Yes. Am I a little creeped out that John Edwards was a corporate attorney (and also a personal injury lawyer?) Yikes! Do I wish we had a better system? Yes! Oh Ralph Nader, you'd make an interesting president, but it will never happen. Do I think the electoral college is a crappy way to do an election? Yes. But I honestly think that John Kerry will do less to screw up our country than George Bush will. At least he has the sense to see that the current healthcare system is an abomination. I am a college educated woman with a solid work history. I am sitting here with no health care. If I go out and buy it, I will pay about 150 dollars a month for a couple of months until I have a job, for something I am unlikely to use. But if something "catastrophic" happens, I will probably be bankrupt and in debt anyway, because I'll still have to pay many thousands of dollars. I'm not saying going from an almost entirely privatized health system to an entirely government sponsored one is the way to go. But it is WRONG that if I walked outside and broke my arm, I would basically be irrecoverably in debt. I know, I need to go out and get coverage. And the thing is, more or less, I can afford to. But there are lots of people, who, like me, are unemployed....whether it's because they moved across the country or because they got laid off, and UNLIKE me, they may have several children, a car payment and rent to pay. I don't know if Kerry can fix that, but I think I'm interested in seeing him take a crack at it.
OK. That's all.
