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Edited on Fri Oct-27-06 07:30 PM by originalpckelly
The greatest problem with the Republicans, is that they are so out of touch with reality. They live in a fantasy world.
For months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq Defense Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly denied there was an insurgency. Then it became so obvious, he had to acknowledge that yes indeed it did and still does exist.
For two years Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Rice, Scott McClellan, the Vice President, and the President all rebuked the press for not sharing the "good news" in Iraq. Then they stopped that at the beginning of this year, when the American people through opinion polls showed they knew there wasn't much good news in Iraq.
For nearly three years the President continually used the phrase "stay the course" to define his strategy in Iraq. He called those who wanted more policy substance than three words, along with those who wanted accountability for Iraq's government via timetables, cut and runners. Only last Sunday he actually said "we've never been (about) 'stay the course,'" something which to anyone with a memory sounded like a lie or even scarier an attempt to edit history and trick people into thinking we never really were about "stay the course."
In areas other than Iraq, the fantasy world of Republicans is just as frightening.
Bush said former FEMA Director Michael Brown was doing a "heck of a job" during Hurricane Katrina, when in that pesky little thing called reality, he was doing far from that at the time.
He champions his recent budget deficit because it is half of the last years, even though it is still the fifth largest on record, and was reduced by stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from Social Security and government pension plans. (This is ironic too, as only last year he was proclaiming the need to reform Social Security, because it lacked the funding to provide benefits for Baby Boomers retiring in five years.)
For nearly four years, he has championed his Container Security Initiative, which uses shipping manifests to identify "high risk" containers to be inspected. Back in reality, any terrorist worth their salt would simply alter the shipping manifest to make it look less suspicious.
For five years, he and his fellow Republicans have controlled the House and the Presidency, and for three years have also had control of the Senate. During this time they have not implemented any real border protections. In reality, anyone with common sense knows that if it is possible for people with little or no money to come across the border, it must be easy for those with financial backing, such as terrorists planning to carry out an attack on America.
All of these things are bad enough, either because these Republicans are delusional or the are lying to us, but their fantasy world is causing great harm to America and the world.
In Iraq, the refusal to recognize the insurgency's existence, prevented our nation from reacting to it quickly by developing a strategy to defeat it. This alone may have doomed us to defeat in Iraq, if we weren't destined for that the day we invaded.
In America, the simplistic rhetoric of the President and his labeling of dissenters as "cut and runners" killed any real and productive debate about this war. Instead of our nation adapting to defeat the enemy, the enemy adapted to defeat us, and in the process thousands of American soldiers have died.
In Hurricane Katrina, the President's lack of urgency, his crummy appointee Brown, and unwillingness to accept reality, caused a large number of American citizens to die. People who were counting on our government in their time of need, received the cold shoulder of the President's delusions.
His concealment of the real deficit, prevents Americans from knowing that his tax cuts while they have raised tax revenues, have not done enough to account for the lower taxes. His lack of candor in this area allows this nation to continue down the path of damning America's young to the prison of debt.
For obvious reasons his deluded Container Security Initiative, gives this nation a false sense of security, while exposing our economic underbelly for the enemy to attack. This along with his lack of action to secure the border, causes America to be weak in the face of terror.
We can only create a better reality when we know what the current one is, and it is obvious the Republicans do not know what reality is. God help us if the American people don't vote to make reality better.
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