Believe it or not . . .

Criticism is much of what we do in blogs. Occasionally I try to balance it with positive recognition pieces, but not very often. During the course of this blog, readers have at times encountered the phrase "It made my head spin," or "I keep thinking I have heard everything." No wonder I am in a critical mood. There is plenty of news to perturb us. Here are a few exerpts from the current crop of stories under the heading of "I could not believe my own eyes!" -

"International poll ranks Bush a threat to world peace" is the headline from the (Nov. 3, 2006) International Herald Tribune, and the AP. It makes me shake my head to see in black and white that our current president (OCP) frightens a majority of people in countries that are our oldest friends. It is very demoralizing to learn that they see him as a danger to world peace. How long will it take to win back the respect of our neighbors? To quote from the story,

TORONTO: A majority of people in three countries with close ties to the U.S. — Britain, Canada and Mexico — consider President George W. Bush a threat to world peace, ranking the U.S. president right up there with the leaders of two countries he has labeled part of the "axis of evil" — North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"It is striking that these are America's closest allies and the populations are going, 'Whoa, this guy is a danger to the world,'" said Paul Adams, executive director of Ottawa-based EKOS Research which released the poll results Friday.
"These are allies and if the populations of their countries are saying George Bush is a threat to peace, that's a pretty damning statement about Bush's public diplomacy in the world."

Hoekstra Pushed For Publication of Sensitive Nuclear Documents, Blames New York Times, IAEA. The U. S. government published - then rescinded - sensitive documents on one of their websites detailing how to build an atomic bomb. In previous posts I have given DNA Director John Negroponte, who should have had to approve the release, the benefit of the doubt. But he was overruled by OCP Bush, according to a very lengthy and revealing post by "Local Yokel" about the incident in the Santa Cruz Sentinal. I cannot imagine what happened here. It must have been pressure, or an oversight, or a calculated act. In any event it was incredibly stupid and dangerous to U.S security. The Washington Post, by the way, did not mention that Hoekstra was one of those pushing for publication. Quoting from Think Progress (Nov. 4, 2006):

Yesterday Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, blamed the New York Times and the IAEA for the leak of sensitive Iraqi documents — a “nuclear primer” on how to build an atomic bomb — on a public government website.Concerns by the New York Times and the IAEA prompted the government to shut down the website.
The IAEA, “fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms,” privately protested last week to the American ambassador. The Bush administration shut down the site on Thursday evening, only after the New York Times “asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials.”
Hoekstra, on the other hand, was responsible for making that information public in the first place. Last November, he and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) wrote to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and asked him to the post the Iraqi documents.

"Time for Rumsfeld to go" is the headline carried by several armed services newspapers. CNN.com reports in its (Nov. 4, 2006) story that the Army Times editorialized in favor of the ouster of Rumsfeld. Things are bad when the only people who want Rumsfeld to stay are OCP and Rumsfeld. To quote,

An editorial to be published in an independent military publication Monday calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be replaced.
And the Pentagon is countering by saying the new "chorus of criticism" is "old news."
The editorial will appear Monday in the four weekly publications that serve the four main branches of the U.S. military, according to the senior managing editor for Army Times Publications, the papers' parent company.

Bush and Company began their reign in the year 2000 with the mantra, "Everything NOT Clinton." One of the principles leading "the company" is Donald Rumsfeld. When he first sat at his new desk, one of the items for his background reading might have been a report on war games held in 1999 that predicted Iraq failure. He either did not read it or ignored the findings or purposely went in the opposite direction. Whatever the reason, the consequences of his decision have had disastrous results. It is those results that have so many people calling for the man's resignation now.

Any successful corporation removes its CEO/OCP and his team for failure to perform. In this case Americans cannot do this because we do not have the parliamentary form of government. But, as the 2006 shareholders, we can remove members of our board of governance, U.S. Senators and Representatives. A number of them are pushing our corporation towards bankruptcy, through lack of intellect, incompetence, ethics violations, absent moral values, and unwillingness to carry their weight.

Shake your heads no more. Believe it. Act. Vote those rascals out tomorrow!

Tags: bush democrats election elections iraq republicans vote war news politics

My "creative post" at Southwest Blogger is about magical thinking.