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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 2004)
N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , JAN/FEBRUARY 2004 PAGE L E IT H K A H L I do not think it likely that Bush will occupy the White House for a second term, not because the American “people" have any means to prevent him from doing so, but because the nation’s wealthy elite are going to choose a new executive to guard their wealth. In 2000, Bush's campaign team enjoyed a fairly wide base of support among the rulers of American business and military. Most of that support has now become disappointed in him. To wit, the leaders of Wall Street are nostalgic about the prosperity they enjoyed through the Clinton years, and the computer and information sector barons feel likewise. Most military leaders are becoming frustrated with Bush's obvious military incompetence and his misappraisal of the disaster in the Middle East he has ordered them to administrate. America's leading importers and exporters are frustrated with the costs imposed by his ineffective “security” measures. Even the oil barons are frustrated that no oil has materialized for them out of Iraq. (Those pipelines just seem to keep blowing up.) What the American ruling class wants now is a neo-liberal Democrat to rebuild their international investment prospects and consolidate the gains that they made through Bush's expansionist adventure. They want someone like a Harry Truman or an LBJ. The only major support Bush has left within the ruling class is among weapons and defense manufact urers and contractors like Haliburton. For these reasons and not because of anything the “great American public" may think about Bush one way or another, I believe that a Democrat will occupy the White House in January 2005. Many Americans who vote for this Democrat will do so in the hopes the Democrat will get us out of Iraq and improve our health care. Unfortunately, none of the Democratic candi dates are any more likely to do either of those things than G.W. Bush is. Whoever occupies the White House in the next term will continue to cut our social services and build up the occupation force in Iraq unless we as a people engage in activities (far beyond merely voting) to prevent it from being profitable for them to do so. TERESA B A R N E S I'd like to think Bush wouldn’t be elected this year. I was afraid he would be after 9/11 when he had those high ratings. I have started to disregard polls and everything except what I hear or see. I have yet to meet someone who says they are completely happy with what Bush is doing. Most people I talk to seem interested in the idea of cooperation and peace. If Bush does get elected (or re-elected), I will think a lot of people are negative and apocalyptic. I think that is a cop-out — it frees people up from having to do something right now about the way things are. E L IZ A B E T H M E N E T R E Y I wish to be optimistic. I hope that the Democratic Party will rise to the occasion and get behind the strongest candidate. Defeating Bush should be the highest priority. However, the cool detached part of my brain fears that he will indeed be re-elected and that is truly frightening to contemplate. If the Democrats can't unite and if the American people continue to be misled, ill-informed and manipulated through the corporate owned media and Bush is re-elected, we can look forward to: The further erosion of our civil rights and freedom. The continued rape of our environment. The deterioration of the social systems that support those who need support the most — children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. Growing ranks of those who live in poverty. More children without any health insurance. Corporate controlled media that only reports what corporations want us to hear. A government that supports corporations' bottom-line over the health and safety of American citizens. What is most chilling to me is the current administration seems oblivious to bankrupting the next generation. Where is the long-term thinking? Where is real leadership? I maintain hope, because I must. I have a young child and I want a better world for her. It is critical not to give up in these darkening days. S A R A H S E IL E R I have a feeling Mr. Bush will be re-elected. I do not like this, and even though an alternative outcome is possible and that surprises still exist, underneath any other winning candidate the suspicion of a shape-shifter or hired man will be an obvious reality most will deny. Looking back at the last election, it is easy to see the amount of power the Bush family has, and how the government is a big Shop & Go —with money you can buy yourself anything. Or you are friends with the security and they let you walk right on through with what you really didn’t earn. A private business decision to hire a new President, that is how the last election worked. It seems to me that as long as Bush is interested in something, it will be his. So the question is, how will this effect us in the 21st century? TIM LANE All I need do is take one person to then personalize the sum of thoughts, motives and actions he has displayed, and conjecture from that what will happen. Suppose this person ignores the necessity of a clean and preserved environment: what if he never acknowledged the necessity of the care of his own body? What if he cut off his fingers and gorged himself on concentrated poisons? What if this person did not think of peace, especially with foreign persons and places? Maybe he would never begin to understand or accept (or even care) about their own purpose, concerned only that by removing them he makes more room for his power and that much less he had no control over. He does not take time to consider how all parts of his body make up the integrated whole because he is blind to the equality of segmented parts of the human species and that without equality and integration, alienated or separated parts will shrivel up and most likely die off. This person sees destruction as the remedy of what in his illusory mind is a problem or a barrier between him and more personal wealth or power. He does not particularly care about the horrible effects of violence, only the rewards he thinks it will bring him. I could give more examples, but my purpose is to try and illustrate that the mentality of personal avarice can be simplified and that it represents the part of our collective ego that seems to always want to take over everything: the inability to accept symbiosis in order to sustain the whole, and much more demented, fear-born pathologies. President Bush can only get away with so much before degeneration leads to demise. I don't think this necessarily bad. I feel it is healthier to accept and forgive his ignorance.However, I am disappointed he has chosen to use no creativity anywhere, which is leading to a very foolish, deceitful and predictable path of self-aggrandizement at the expense of everybody else. CA RO LYN AD AM S I guess I hope so much that Bush won’t be re-elected that I can’t get my mind around him being in the White House again. If he will be in the White House for a second term it will be disaster. He has done so much harm to this country. YES TO PEACE ^acf)’nRocK RECORD A TAPE SHOP POPULAR MUSIC FROM THE 17TH TO 21 ST CENTURY A ALLEY C A T ESPRESSO 389 12TH ST. ASTORIA 3338-6376 M U S IC N O N -PR O FIT TO THE SPAY A NEUTER H U M A N E A S S O C IA TIO N Momentum is building across the world for the Global Day of Action Against War & Occupation on March 20, the one year anniversary of the U S. bombing and invasion of Iraq. On that day millions around the world will take to the streets to say “yes" to peace and “no' to preemptive war and occupation. Joining with growing numbers of military families and soldiers, we will call for an end to occupation of Iraq and Bush's militaristic foreign policies. March 20 will be the first time the world's “other superpower," as The New York Times described us, will take center stage since February 5, 2003, when more than 10 million people across the globe expressed their opposition to Bush's looming war with Iraq The U S protests will also take on the war at home. We will express the growing opposition to the so-called “Patriot" Act, authorizing political arrests, indefinite detention, domestic spying and religious and racial profiling We will call for an end to the mass detentions and deportation of innocent immigrants in the name of fighting terrorism We will say “no" to massive military spending amidst vast cuts in vital domestic social and economic programs. '■VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR WEBSITE S U S A N A G L A D W IN I thought the powers that be would turn their backs on President Bush, vilify him and win the love of the world back again, and carry on the usual carving up of the world. Since there are enough computerized voting machines that can be programmed to elect Republicans, I think Bush can be re-elected. I hope after November they (someone!) compares which machines elected which party. The Bushies are doing less carving up and more rape, pillage and grab. Since war is their game (and dollars), everyone hating us is money in the bank for them. I feel this culture is like a drunk on a bender and is going to crash. Maybe the sooner the better, but it won't be pretty. Capitalism leads to greed and it is ruling the world, so I think it does need to crash. sean mcmullin Don’t get me wrong, I would rather have a warm, fuzzy, sensitive to the world’s pain liberal Democrat in the White House than a cock-strutting cowboy-jock of a conservative Republican because that talking head would be ever more slightly closer to my needs than the other. But — and this is a big, no-way-that-would-ever-fit-in- a-movie theater seat But — I feel that we have more pressing problems that the outcome of the November election, and that for the most part none of the candidates are going to approach these problems sincerely because they are the wealthy ruling class. True change would be a threat to them. True change would bring them back to our level. True change would confront the presence of the USA as a fat imperialistic war-mongering monster that is attempting to pacify the world as it has already done to the people of this country. Do we really think that another President is going to derail all of this? Let’s not fool ourselves. K A R E N M E L L IN I think Bush will seize the Presidency once more, just as he did the last time. I believe he will create an artificial event as the election draws close, a catastrophic emergency of some sort that is already probably being planned. What I always noticed about the right-wing during the Vietnam War is that they didn’t have much imagination and reverted to tactics used by brownshirts to curtail opposition — and I expect that they will continue. 3
