I know I have hardly written anything of consequence lately. This cycle has just about burned me up mentally and it is high time for a break. Not that it has been a bad cycle. It has actually been pretty good. Good privates for the most part, they did very well in just about every way they could.
It's just been a long summer and being in Echo Company has it's own particular set of headaches that we have to deal with. I will be glad to get back into one of the regular companies, whichever one I end up in.
We did Victory Forge last week and it went really well. Just have the final inspection and all the admin stuff to finish up and then Family Day and Graduation.
But I've been thinking a lot about the election lately, and I guess I feel like I should do at least one post to wrap things up before it gets here.
It comes down to this...
In my opinion, there has never been a more important election in my lifetime as the one that will conclude on Tuesday. Here's why...
1. The Supreme Court: Chances are high that whoever wins the election will nominate at least one and possibly more Justices to the highest court in the land. In a society that is increasingly legislated from the Judicial, rather than the Legislative, branch of government, this is the most important issue in the election. I am an Infantryman. I will, without a doubt, be in a combat zone at least once and maybe twice during the next term. So for me to choose anything other than the war in Iraq as the number one issue should tell you something about how important I think it is.
I can't think of anything more frightening than between one and three liberal Justices taking a seat on the Supreme Court. I can't think of anything that I think would do more harm to the country we live in.
2. The War On Terror: Anybody who tries to tell you that John Kerry will do as good or better job in the war on terror is smoking something. 73% of the military plan to vote for George Bush. There's a reason for this. As a group, the military is pretty hard to fool. We see the direct results of national policy decisions every day of our lives. We don't see it on the news, we are the news. There's a big difference in watching a thirty second sound bite on CNN and living through days, months or years of the same thing. I haven't been to Iraq yet, but most of my buddies have. The front line troops coming back from Iraq, at least the ones I know, are overwhelmingly in favor of George W Bush.
Most of them are scared to death of a Kerry presidency and I have heard more than one person say that they would rather get out of the military than serve under him.
I have thought about that myself, and thought about it hard. I can't say that I would leave the military, but I would be very very unhappy if he were my commander in chief.
The only reason I have to say I wouldn't leave the military would be a simple sense of duty. My own disgust at having to serve under a worthless piece of crap like Kerry would not be reason enough to forsake the duty I owe to the country in general. Regardless of who sits in the White House, I have to serve the needs of the Army and the United States as best I can. I can only speak for myself though.
3. The Economy and Taxes: I have to choose who to believe. I refuse to pay too much heed to what either candidate tells me. I would rather listen to people who have an interest in the economy for it's own sake rather than a political interest.
The Nobel Prize winner in Economics says that the only thing wrong with Bush's tax cuts was that they should have been bigger. When Tax rates are cut across the board, the Government actually ends up taking in more money in tax receipts because of the relative growth in spending and jobs. When taxes increase, people have less money to spend and the economy suffers. It doesn't seem all that hard to understand to me.
Alan Greenspan, who has been the chairman of the National Reserve through several Presidents, says that the Bush tax cuts were the only reason the recession ended as happily and moderately as it did. Unemployment is at a lower rate than it was all through the last decade, and President Bush is right on track when he says that Education is the key to long term job growth and stability in the coming years.
Manufacturing jobs are going to continue to shrink regardless of who sits in the White House. If it's cheaper to make overseas, that's where it's going to be made. Rather than making it artificially more expensive overseas by penalizing businesses who outsource, spend that money putting Americans into more technical and rewarding jobs that will have a future in the coming decades. Manufacturing simple products is for the uneducated. Don't we kill two birds with one stone of we educate our labor force and leave the menial jobs to the masses of unskilled laborerers in other countries? Hell, they need jobs too. Keep em busy and make em some money so they've got better things to do than throw rocks at tanks or riot in the streets.
And I am middle class. I paid less taxes under President Bush than I did under Bill Clinton. I just bought a brand new car and I am a homeowner for the first time in my life. I work my ass off, but I am happy and I have enough money to keep my family fed, clothed and entertained pretty easily.
I have a hard time believing it when John Kerry tries to tell me how miserable I am.
My best friend is a Cardiologist. We graduated High School in 1989. He just completed his education about a year ago and has a truly apocalyptic amount of debt in the form of student loans. John Kerry, who has been wealthy from the moment he spawned, wants me to believe that we should tax the hell out of my friend Ron because he makes more than $200,000 a year.
He went to school for over a decade. I went for two years and dropped out. He makes about 5 times the amount of money I do, and went to school for OVER five times the amount that I did. He came from a middle class family, if that, and paid his own way through. The hours I work as a Drill Sergeant suck, but he worked the same hours for low pay for several years as an intern and resident.
His malpractice insurance payment is astounding thanks to trial lawyers like John Edwards exorting unreasonable amounts of money from doctors, hospitals, and corporations. I'm not saying that restitution shouldn't be made if someone gets hurt. I am saying that when it gets out of hand and some poor guy loses a finger and wins the multi million dollar lottery, it hurts us all.
And when you add malpractice insurance, student loan payments, the amount of hours he works, the amount of time and effort invested, and the already high tax bracket he lives in, my friend really doesn't make all that much more than me.
Seems fair to me...
actually, it seems like he is already getting the short end of the stick.
4. Character: I have seen four years of George W Bush and I am happy with his performance as President. He has not been perfect, but nobody ever has. He tends not to admit mistakes, but if he did, his opponent would broadcast it around the clock. We didn't find WMDs, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. New evidence points to Russian involvement in sending transportation assets to Iraq right before the war. It's doubtful that you will hear too much about that on the news because the Russians are supposed to be our friends now. It's really a moot point now, because they will most likely not be found or traced now anyway.
George W Bush took a stand, and if he made a mistake in initiating the Iraq War, it was in taking too long to do so. If he had said "to hell with it" and swooped in without giving Saddam months and months to prepare himself, I have no doubt we would have found a whole lot of things going on that were cleaned up before we arrived. I've seen him up close, and I am not bragging when I say that I am a very good judge of people. His speech and mannerisms were sincere and open. He is not the most polished speaker I have ever seen, but in my opinion that is more of an asset than a liability. He has a good heart and the spine to back it up.
John Kerry is a prick. He is a lying, two faced, politically correct, politically guided, dishonorable, conceited, wishy washy, opportunistic, snake oil salesman. I have no idea what he will do on any of the issues I talked about, because I haven't the time to research all 734 positions he has had on them.
"I have a plan..."
Bullshit.
Tell me your plan, don't point me to John Kerry.com, because I want to hear it straight from the horse's face... errrr... mouth.
He served in Vietnam, by the way.
Then again, so did Mr Rogers, Jimi Hendrix, and some guy living under a bridge in Atlanta. All of them certainly served at least as distinguished a tour as Mr Kerry, but none are qualified to lead the nation. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln never served in combat and led this nation through one of it's darkest hours admirably.
Mr Kerry has apparently lost all contact with reality. He has come to the point that any bad thing that happens in the world can be placed directly on the shoulders of the President. I am sure that he doesn't really believe this, so it's insulting that he thinks that we are stupid enough to do so. He claims that we did wrong in using Afghan troops in Tora Bora (although he praised it at the time) but says we should be doing less of the fighting in Iraq. Which way do we go? I think we try to find a balance of US and indiginous forces, which would appear to be what George W Bush is doing. (By the way, GEN Tommy Franks was the commander in Tora Bora at the time and backs up President Bush completely)
He claims that we are shortchanging the veterans, when nothing could be farther from the truth. My wife works for the VA. The VA hospitals are getting improvements and funding that they have never had in the past. But it doesn't have to be the truth for John Kerry to throw it out there for a public who doesn't know any better and won't bother to research the facts.
If you read the ENTIRE transcript of the Bin Laden tape, it is a mile long list of griping and complaining about how badly it is going for Al Qaeda. He moans about the elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence there. He cries about how scattered and harrassed Al Qaeda has become. But of course, Al Jazeera isn't going to release that part. They understand the power of propaganda better than OBL perhaps. You aren't supposed to broadcast how badly it's going for you lol.
Anyway, there's more, but I have to go get ready to trick-or-treat. (mmmmm.....candy)
It comes down to this.
Go Vote.
And if you live in a swing state especially, get ALLLL your friends who are pro Bush to go vote. Every vote is going to count.
