...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Thursday, April 17, 2003
      ( 8:31 AM )
 
Thursday List of Things that are Bothering Me:

1. Why did the Oregonian have a headline in yesterday's paper about how protests have cost the police $1million in overtime pay, but in the paper on Tuesday, only one line buried in a story mentioned that unfunded mandates from Homeland Security have cost the police $2million?

2. Why are teachers willing to work without pay in order to give students the education they deserve despite the state not funding schools, but politicians always get pay raises and secure contracts with lobbying groups before they leave office?

3. If the Bush administration claims that it is not conducting a war on Islam, why is Franklyn Graham leading prayer at the Pentagon whilst his organization publicly prostletizes Muslims in Iraq before giving them humanitarian aid?

4. How can Dick Cheney claim that Iraq's oil will be the key to the Iraqi people's democracy and freedom when there is only ONE (Norway) oil producing country that is a democracy in the world? Having oil has NEVER given people democracy.

5. How did our country morph into a seemingly majority of fundies and fascists? Were those tendancies always there, only breaking through to the light of day occasionally in fits and bursts, like Prohibition, McCarthyism, J. Edgar Hoover... and it's just that recently this minority has been given validation by the leadership and so it just SEEMS like the majority? Or are we totally screwed?

6. How can right thinking men believe that the PATRIOT Act is the best thing for this country?

7. Why does the First Lady do commercials on tv demanding that we make sure our children can read, and yet she stands by silently while her husband takes all the money away from the neediest school districts?

8. How come David Bloom died but Geraldo Rivera is so healthy?

9. Why can't people see the hypocrisy in our demand that Syria and Iran have no WMD, and yet when they propose to agree to a treaty that bans ALL WMDs from the middle east, we back down because Israel is allowed to have them - but none of their neighbors are?

10. Why is the Bush administration so obsessed with Israel?

11. Why are there tons of websites where people spew hatred at dissenters, but there isn't a website where people can go and log the abuse/discrimination/censorsing they have received for voicing dissent?

12. How can we keep up this campaign of terror on the world and maintain our own country's health at the same time? I don't think it can be done. I think the U.S. will get sicker and sicker until it can't sustain the imperialistic goals of its leaders any longer.

13. How did I so easily transition from cyncism and challenging to fatalism and resignation?

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