Well ... ok if you guys want to talk a little more ...
( I know - shut up already! But I'm bored.)
After reading the last couple posts I was thinking about why I actually liked Kerry and although it is throughly academic at this point to discuss these things, it seems that being throughly academic is what this thread has become all about.
I don't think Kerry was a flipflopper (and don't think changing your position is always bad anyways). The Bush administration is forever saying one thing then another, sometimes even on the same day. I watch John Stewart everynight and he spent a couple years teasing the Bushies by showing one piece of video, then another where they were saying two opposite things. We're safer - we're not safer, Catching Osama is not really important - catching Osama is very important, We're positive Iraq has nuclear weapons - we never said Iraq had nucear weapons etc.
I went through most of Kerry's voting record before deciding to vote for him and it seemed fairly consistent. For example he always votes for gun control, he always votes pro-choice, he usually leans towards environmentalists, leans away from war.
It looked like he was inconsistent on Iraq, but if you analyze it I don't think he was. He was remarkably consistent in his opposition to military intervention even back to the first Gulf War, being one of the few who voted against it. When he voted for it this time he felt it was an authorization only to be used if all else failed. When it became clear how gungho the Bush administration was he voted against funding further aggression.
I think it is clear he never was for the war in Iraq and realized that he had to deal with the reality that Bush had already commited us to it. I think he did a pretty good job on that.
Here's a few things I wanted from a president, hoping John Kerry would at least partially do, and feel George Bush will never do:
1. My Dad, who is now deceased, spent the last five years of his life very sick and suffering with piss-poor health care. He would probably be alive today if he had better care, and he worked hard his whole life. He got a raw deal.
All americans should have the best health care in the world. Not just some americans.
No one seems to question WHY health care is expensive. I think the biggest reason is greed.
I think america's health care should be treated like the highway system, the space program, the military. Instead of a profit center and cash cow for wealthy investors it should be an important part of our nation's infrastructure. Middle-men are profiting from other people's pain and sucking up profits big-time. I'm not talking about doctors, nurses, researchers, inventors - all of whom deserve to get rich when they contribute.
I'm talking about insurance companies, lawyers, investors, salesman, lobbyists, and high payed executives.
I think that just because an industry started exclusively in the private sector is no reason it has to stay there forever.
The airlines are another example of an important infrastructure that we trust too much to the private sector.
Education is one area that started in the public sector that we might want to try privatizing.
Back to my wishlist.
2. We are doing things in the war on terror that I feel are unneccesary and despicable. Some of this stuff we have allowed our government to do in the name of fighting terror is going to come back to bite us later.
Torturing prisoners either physically or mentally is one of these things. "Unlawful enemy combatant" is a nonsense phrase that is not recognized by the rest of the world (or us before now).
The bush administration made it up to justify their not treating "the detainees" as either prisoners of war, or regular criminals; so that they would be in a no-man's land outside of all international law or internal oversight.
They want to hold people indefinitely without anyone even knowing where they are and they want to do whatever they like to these people. Some of these men we are holding (or have held) were scooped up in raids of general buildings and certain areas.
Some are (or were before they were eventually released) only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and many were held and tortured for months or years wth no access to courts or international oversight.
It's just wrong and I would want the President to put an end to it. There needs to be checks and balances here.
3. I think abortion rights are intertwined with woman's rights and to outlaw them would be a major setback to equality between the sexes.
I would want a President who supports Roe vs Wade.
A woman can never be equal if she can be forced to give birth to a child she considers a mistake, even at the expense of her own career, education or health.
I believe the groups who oppose abortion (and all of us in general) should lobby to reduce the number of abortions by promoting abstinence (yeah right), better birth control and adoption, but it should never be made illegal again.
4. I want a president who respects the press as our fourth branch of government and welcomes their critisism.
He should hold frequent press conferences (Bush holds almost none) and not try to intimidate the press by shutting of access to those who write articles critical of his administration. He should not limit questions to only one, or talk down to them in an arrogant manner like I saw him do last week.
I also want a president who welcomes dissent from the people and does not try to control demonstrations critical of his policies.
Bush is the first president to misuse the secret service to remove people with anti bush signs (and only those people) from motorcade routes and public speeches he makes. The whole country should be a "free-speech zone" not just a fenced off area far from his public appearances.
These appearances are one of the few occasions where a citizen who is angry at the president might have the opportunity to protest in a manner the president, and the press, can see.
This is important and I feel it is un-american for an american president to try to hide or squelch this dissent.
He should expect and welcome it, and respect the citizens point of view and his or her right to hold that protest sign in a president's face.
5. I want a president who does not lie to the people about who big tax cuts benefit the most. I don't believe voodoo economics works by trickling down from the top.
Also: The so called "death tax" actually affects so few people, a small group of multimillionares, but bush gives speeches where he insinuates that it is an evil thing that must be abolished for the good of everybody. The vast majority of estates pay no federal estate tax.
Regarding estate taxes: They are a good thing for society. Most people don't realize that if the wealth is not "leveled" to any extent after each generation it's like creating a never ending game of monopoly where the wealth gets pooled into a small number of families, basically like the european landowners of past centuries. This reduces opportunity for everyone else.
The middle class is going to pay for all these wealthy tax cuts with lower social services and higher deficits.
I want a president who taxes the wealthy more, and the middle class less and stimulates the economy through targeted government spending programs.
6. I think we all deserve a president who is eloquent, and a superb public speaker. This is a big part of his job. We should have a president who speaks in full sentences (not fragments) and has no trouble putting together complete thoughts at the spur of the moment.
It is embarrasing to me that our current president need a little notebook to flip through whenever he speaks, and still manages to say the wrong thing almost as many times as not.
Well, that's enough for now. I'm just a peon, as a poster before me already said, and I felt that John Kerry would have done (or at least tried to do) these important things for our country.
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