I came face to face with a most aggressive form of bigotry yesterday. At a meeting where attendees were warned beforehand to not speak on any subjects of a political nature, one attendee managed to get on the agenda under the farce of needing to accomplish another goal. When he was finally called on to speak, inconsistent with the purpose of our meeting, and irrespective of the admonishment regarding political subjects, this gentleman began using our meeting as a forum to support his political agenda. Not only did he blame Republicans for all the economic problems throughout history, he diminished our entire war on terror to nothing more than a greedy fight over oil. This voter is the scariest voter of all. This voter, while under the guise of knowing his subject, had not researched at all, but rather gave us a spiel that was nothing more than a regurgitation of what the liberal media has been spoon feeding us.
What’s interesting is, this gentleman stressed how the economy boomed during Democratic leadership. Sadly, he overlooked the fact that the booming economy during the Clinton administration was a farce. The economy appeared to be booming because Bill Clinton wanted every American to be in a home, so he called upon lenders with the demand to make the loans happen, whatever it took, resulting in the mortgage crisis we have today. Bill did not have the forethought to understand that lenders would have to make up for potential future defaults through loans with a variable interest rate. And, lenders didn’t stop there. They aggressively pursued college students, and everyone else for that matter, to extend credit so everyone could live the “American Dream”. No wonder the economy appeared to be booming. Americans were running up debt like never before. Merchants were ecstatic -they profited the most from this frenzy. Now, we’re dealing with the fallout at the hands of a Democratic congress who vowed to filibuster anything President Bush tried to do. This high school mentality has no place in the running of our country, and in the paraphrased words of Sarah Palin, at this point, both parties and their constituents need to stop placing blame and come together to figure out how to fix it.
Now, with regard to the war in Iraq. Anyone who believes that the Bush administration used 9-11 events and the evidence of weapons of mass destruction to go into this country and start a war, my suggestion to that person is to take leave from their job and spend a year in Afghanistan, or Baghdad, right alongside a U.S. soldier every single day of that year. If one can do that, only then would that person have earned the right to make assessments of why we’re really over there fighting -and, to set the record straight, we didn’t start the war. The war began on U.S. soil on September 11th, 2001. Every soldier I have spoken with who has served in this war has stated that we are most certainly fighting the right war for the right reasons. They see first hand why our troops are over there, and anyone diminishing it to a mere fight over greed of oil has no respect for our U.S. Military, and in particular, disrespects my son who is serving in Iraq now.
Whether your Democrat or Republican, I encourage you to do your research and be informed before you go vote, and that does not mean your research consists of watching Katie Couric bashing Republicans and having love-fests with Democrats. That blatant bias is not news reporting. She has reduced her position in the media world to nothing more than a forum to support her own personal agenda, without regard for providing a fair, unbiased view of the real issues out there.
Editor's Note: This piece used with the permission of Gracie Dane. Gracie is a guest contributor for MTW and a regular at SensibleLife.com