Why is it that the new touch-screen voting machines in Kentucky have no documentation or receipt to issue the voter? It is a very unsettling feeling to know that your vote could be manipulated or hacked without your knowledge and no record of your vote could be retrieved as happened in Ohio during the last Presidential election. There have been numerous problems and system failures with the new touch-screen machines nation-wide which have resulted in erroneous vote counts. This will be the last election we will be allowed to use both the old and new machines. Employees at the county courthouse say the Federal government require we use the new touch-screens and no paper receipts will be issued. If you are not out of town on election day you will not be allowed to vote via the absentee ballot. I wonder how this would go over if Bill Clinton were president and democrats were in charge of all branches of government? After the questionable way Bush was appointed President in 2000 and the many questions surrounding touch-screen voting errors in 2004 I would think the government would go out of their way to assure voters that their political choices are secure. That does not seem to be the case with the new machines. If an administration that doesn't understand the difference between a surplus and a deficit, "mission accomplished" "or stay the course," how does anyone have confidence that they can count votes accurately?
They have a vested interest in muddying the waters and suppressing the votes of certain groups when it comes to elections. Knowing their well documented proclivity for lying and criminal political activities I don't trust Republicans with my vote.

Last night after a party, Bush, Cheney, and Ronald Dumsfeld drove off a bridge with Rice and the entire military in the back seat. Rice and the entire military ended up drowning and Bush, Cheney and Dumsfeld walked away without a scratch. At a press conference today they said it was just an accident that couldn’t be avoided. Oh well. That’s water under the bridge. Let’s stay the course.

Bush is a symptom of the "Republican Disease"
by W. Christopher Epler |

George Bush may be a smirking puppet, but we shouldn't forget that what really counts is the hand inside the puppet.

And that hand is who or what? That's easy; it's our Republican neighbors, in-laws, and colleagues! And the danger is that if we're not very clear about this, we'll keep treating the symptom and not the disease.

Which is just what the core Republicans want. What could be better than to have G. Duhbya for a front man? He annoys everyone (just like Bolton!) and thus becomes the quintessential lightening rod -- the appendix in the Republican gut.

Is this pure chance? Of course not. He focuses the outrage of the country (and world) away from this irrational and immoral army.

Leo Tolstoy warned the world not to glorify Napoleon by assuming one individual can dominate world events. He pointed out that if it hadn't been Napoleon it would have been someone else. Napoleon was a "symptom" (like George), not a cause. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The world was "ripe" for Napoleon.

Exactly the same thing is true for G. Duybya. Get serious, are we really supposed to believe that this pseudo Texan with a Daddy Degree from Yale and the conscience (and attention span) of a grasshopper is "dominating" world events?

No, no, no, he's merely the front man, a symptom of our country's values at their worst. "Republicans" have been with us since the beginning of recorded history, with their limitless greed, Pharisee hypocrisies, and righteous violence. Bush is simply the visible boil.

The problem with treating symptoms is that you never get at the causal disease. Band-Aids on cancer don't do much.

So what are we to conclude from this? We should realize that what's happening now in America has little or nothing to do with politics as usual and that it's profoundly to the advantage of Republicans to convince us that it does.

This is a conflict between good and evil. Evil is a tricky word, certainly, but what other shoe fits Bush's indifference to New Orleans and a presidency of nonstop, pathological lying?

Let's face it; America's pig rich are eating the rest of us alive. We're losing (or have lost!) our heath care, our retirements, our medical research, and our God given wilderness. The Republican energy bill is literally PAYING the corporate cronies of the Bush Family (don't forget Daddy!) to rape Mother Nature at will. How much money are you making off of $3.00 + gasoline? Iraq has turned out to be all about oil after all (paid for with our childrenís blood), and the extremist Evangelical supporters of Bush are busy replacing our sacred American Constitution with their sitcom version of the Bible.

And if all that doesn't add up to some kind of "evil", what does? We shouldn't forget that the only time Jesus "lost his cool" was when we whipped the money changers out of the temple. One wonders what he would do to Halliburton!

May we think about it like this? Imagine that your home is being attacked by a gang of scum bags and one of them, dressed like a clown, and is yelling obscenities at your family from the front yard. Not too hard to figure out who the clown is, is it? Talk about type casting!

Anyway, while you're being distracted by the clown, the vermin are pouring though the back door and goodbye home and family. This is a little like what happened to Odysseus when he came home from his travels to discover that his home and family had been invaded by sleazy, rapacious suitors of Penelope and his kingdom was being eating alive (sound familiar?).

What's interesting about this story is that when Odysseus started his ferocious cleanup of the "suitors", one of them asked him why he was so filled with fury. Remember his answer? His answer was, "Because you were trying to steal my world."

That's the definition of a Republican: someone who's trying to steal your world, your kingdom, your children and the very heart and soul of your life.

Is money your God? Do you think it's ok to sacrifice other people's children to fatten the coffers of companies like Halliburn? Do you think Mother Nature is an insignificant motel for the salvation/damnation antics of Evangelicals? Do you think the pitiful and terrified residents of New Orleans deserved their fate because they weren't members of a George Bush country club?

If your answer is no to any of the above, then you're not a Republican. So no illusions, please. G. W. Bush is merely the smirking tip of this loathsome and heartless iceberg.

Why do many right-wing evangelicals feel so persecuted? Any time someone disagrees with them or responds back to some of their judgementalism they seem to cower in a defensive fetal position and whine about how so unloved and despised they are. They feel as though they have the right to publicly ridicule anyone of another faith or any other Christian that differs with their narrow minded theology. They resort to stating that if anyone differs from them then they differ with Christ. How self-righteous can one be? How can one feel discriminated against when they are part of the countries 95% Christian religion and run the political party that has control of all branches of government? Even though the present administration mocks them to their back and calls them the nuts that they are they still control the agenda. Try being a politically liberal deist Christian in America today like our founding fathers were and you will see what it is really like being discriminated against. We have really come a long way since this countries inception. We are closer to colonial England than revolutionary America. Home of religious freedom and a secular Constitutional government? Not in today’s America.

This administration is second to none when it comes to using straw-man arguments and sliding religious concepts into their speeches in order to make evangelicals feel like they are on their side. The quote, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma” is one that isn’t even found in the Bible but it serves its purpose politically. Since Iraq is now an unwinnable issue politically, republicans are going to try to minimize it. That's why in the same week when “w” said, “Iraq is just a COMMA in history”, Trent Lott, Rush and Bill O’Reilly said they don't care about Iraq. All of them saying this at the same time is no coincidence, it's planned. The president can’t just come out and say he doesn’t care about Iraq any more but this is as close as he can come to brushing it off. So his apologists do it for him. Can you believe that after the three hundred billion dollars and tens of thousands of dead and maimed soldiers he has sacrificed so he could lie about WMD’s, stand on a ship and declare “mission accomplished,” “bring it on” and get elected as a war-time president, he now wants to claim that it’s not that important?” He now wants to “cut and run” from his failures just like he “cut and ran” from accepting responsibility for 911 and finding Bin Laden at Tora Bora. These clowns need to go, PERIOD!

What if liberals sent fliers to right-wing Churches in America showing the Christian coalition leader, Ralph Reed, in an Indian casino getting payoffs from Jack Abramoff and stuffing cash in his pockets? They could also show Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson after 911 saying God punished America because of homosexuals. What if they sent pictures of this years poppy crop in Afghanistan and American kids shooting up the heroin this administration helps support? How about if liberals sent pictures of the tens of thousands of dead and maimed-for-life soldiers and civilians the Iraq war is responsible for? How about the picture of Ronald Dumsfeld smiling and shaking hands with Sadaam Hussein in the 80’s? What if liberals sent pictures of the thousands of Katrina survivors of New Orleans standing in filthy water contaminated with human waste holding their babies and pleading for help? Maybe they would show a graph of how the number of abortions have gone up during Bush’s term in office. How about a picture of the Florida Republican pedophile, Mark Foley, laughing and holding hands with “w” and a young page in his office? Do you think they would hand out fliers with these pictures to Church members the week before the election saying this is what selling your soul to politics has brought you? I wonder.

It's days like this that make me proud to be a republican. Between the pedofiles and chicken hawk liars I'm not sure which ones I trust more. Give me a break. These clowns have to go.