Let me start out tonight be saying that I’ve finally figured out how to see if anyone has happened onto this site, and to my surprise several people have. Of course, everyone is anonymous to me, but so far no one has ventured to make a comment. Just so you know, if you happen to be the occasional visitor tonight, comments would be welcomed – even if you think I’m nuts! I’m going to continue writing because it makes me feel a lot better as I look at a world that seems to be pretty much self-destructing right before our eyes. While my Christian friends write everything that is happening off as us being in the “end times,” I seem to take the approach that it’s time for many of us “baby boomers” who spoke out during Viet Nam and then retreated to the peaceful life of the middle class to start speaking out again. We kind of stood back and watched, sometimes with a feeling of helplessness, as the “Reagan revolution” has attempted to destroy what we learned to take for granted after the protests of the sixties and seventies.

I still remember the day when I was confident that the Congress was watching what was going on in the White House, when the news media actually had journalists working for them (Walter Cronkite, Edward R Murrow, etc), and when working class people could raise a family on one income. Without getting into too much nostalgia, this little part of the blogosphere (keep in mind, I still haven’t participated in what would probably be called the real blog, so I’m assuming this is a blog because my service provider set it up for me :o) is my way of speaking out. It helps me to collect my thoughts so that when I’m in conversation with someone who watches too much Fox, I have a better grip on the “ammunition” I use in an attempt to bring them to their senses. My co-workers think I’ve read too many books lately in my attempt to make up for all the years that I just watched as republicans were stealing our government, our tax dollars, and our standing in the world right out from under our noses.

So, I’m going to continue to speak out, with most of my “speaking out” probably coming from this site. My point: feel free to argue with me, agree with me, or a combination of the two. Probably the vast majority of my posts have related in some fashion to my disgust of George W Bush and those in the upper echelon of his administration, most notably Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales to name a few. I opposed the Iraq invasion from the day it was first publicly discussed and, as I look back, I believe I would have given Bush more respect had he continued pursuing Osama bin Laden until he was captured and either killed or brought to justice. I’m not sure what grieved me more; taking the focus off of bin Laden – the mastermind behind the attack on Manhattan and the Pentagon, or the invasion of Iraq. I saw Viet Nam all over Iraq right from the first day it was mentioned. I still remember Dick Cheney, on some national TV show, predicting we would be greeted as “liberators.” And Donald Rumsfeld saying the “war” would take, “maybe six days, six weeks, I don’t think six months.”

These guys were so obsessed with the huge oil reserves sitting under Iraq and how much money they could make by controlling them that they didn’t take the time to figure out what they were getting into. There are many books about this war and one of the common themes, no matter who the author, is that the Bush administration had virtually no plan for an occupation. They figured that the Iraqi’s would be so glad to get rid of Saddam that they would just do whatever we wanted them to do (I guess). Considering Bush had no idea about the thousand plus year conflict between the Shia and Sunni Arabs, the results have not been surprising. The really sad thing about all this (well, once you get beyond the incredible toll on lives of actual living human beings from all the countries involved) is that bin Laden couldn’t have scripted things any better from his standpoint. George W Bush did the same thing with this war, with the “war” in Afganistan, with our government, and with our economy that he has done with everything else he has touched, from a business standpoint, in his life. HE SCREWED IT UP!

I could never figure out how the republicans could have nominated him in the first place. And, of course, I then have to add that how in the world could “We the People” vote him into office – a man who has been consistent at only one thing – failure – in his life? But, of course, at some point history will prevail and we will find out the truth about that 2000 election. And I’m at this point not even complaining too much about how he stole his way into the White House, because Al Gore’s first “decision” as the democratic nominee wasn’t too impressive either. Can you imagine if Joe Lieberman had been the Vice President and then ran for president in this last election? That would have meant that we just put off the disaster for eight years. So, in a way, the way it worked out was just getting this incompetence out of the way. Now, hopefully, we can start looking at what our nation has REALLY been doing on the world stage and tackling the huge task of restoring what people like me consider the “American Dream.”

President Elect Barrack Obama has an incredible challenge as he takes over the “reins” of our government. I’m feeling that he’s not going to do the “right” thing and select an independent prosecutor to investigate ALL the misbehavior of the Bush administration, and the result of that will be that the republicans will feel this is a temporary setback for them as they are on the outside looking in at the White House. Remember, they still control the media, and that is not likely to change anytime soon. They will continue to operate as they have as long as the Democrats allow it, and everything I’ve seen points to more of the same in regards to Democrats cowing down to Republicans. As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans have virtually destroyed our government. We don’t need to compromise with them on the legislation designed to fix things. They will continue to feed their lies to the air waves and the Democrats will continue to be manipulated as we go forward. I’m certainly not going to “go after” Obama before he gets into office, but I’m seeing some things that are putting up red flags for me.

While Obama is working to “fix” the economy and, hopefully, while he brings our troops home from Iraq and Afganistan, here are a few things that should be investigated. First, due to the amount of human destruction, let’s start with Iraq. Just the fact that there is clear evidence that the White House ordered forged documents to be strategically placed in Bagdad to support the invasion is enough for me to say that all the lies should be investigated. Add to that, the no-bid contracts to corporations directly connected to Rumsfeld and Cheney (and, of course, large Republican donors) – where billions were spent and work was never done or services were never rendered – these should all be investigated. As Franklin Roosevelt so aptly stated, there’s nothing worse than a war profiteer. Secondly, The warrantless wiretapping is a huge infringement on our constitution. At the bare minimum, we should know what has happened and who authorized it. If we allow our constitution to be shredded, the terrorists have basically prevailed. And the torture; everytime they tortured someone it’s as if every person in this country was culpible. We have to face up to what it means that our leaders think they can get away with actions that caused us to put Japanese leaders before the Hague after WW II. Dick Cheney has admitted on national TV that he participated in the authorization of this and hinted that Bush was involved as well (which we all know he was) yet no one seems to want to hold them accountable. ARE WE A NATION OF COWARDS??? (I could go on – outing a CIA agent, refusing subpeonas, fraud in the Wall Street “Bailout” to name a few)

I will be continuing to write my thoughts on this little part of the blogosphere and, again, if you happen by, I invite your comments whether in agreement or not. It would be kind of fun to have a dialogue. And if you’re one of my republican friends (I have a lot of republican friends – proof that God really does have a sense of humor) go ahead and defend yourself. You Republicans really showed me something in this past election. A lot of you really did vote for McCain/Palin, which only proved to me that Republicans don’t take qualification into account when they are deciding on who to vote for. In fact, it’s almost like being unqualified is the requirement. That thought would reinforce the rumor that whoever is controlling the Republican party is remaining invisibly in the background. But seriously, you couldn’t do better than a 72 year old who was more intellectually challenged than Bush and a woman whose claim to fame will probably be her appearances on Saturday Night Live (although some people I’ve talked to are actually pushing for Palin in 2012 – boy wouldn’t that give me a lot of ammuntion to write about!)? Even if you’re a Republican, it’s nice to know that someone is stopping by once in a while!