Regarding the upcoming election

To my dear family:

I say vote for Kerry, and here's why:

Kerry is a solid, responsible sort.

Even though he has represented a liberal state he has often voted
against the grain and supported fiscal responsibility.

I believe that he will represent the majority of Americans well, just
as he accurately represented Massachusetts.

I don't find the liberal label to be a problem any more than the
conservative label. They both hold what I consider to be both valid and
invalid positions on a number of issues. But neither has it all right
all the time.

George Bush, though very well meaning, sincere, and dedicated, lacks
some serious qualifications for his job:

1. He is not a deeply intelligent man, and due to that has a simplistic
view of world events
2. He often acts based on personal instinct rather than heeding the
advice of experts with far more experience and intelligence
3. His view of democracy as an almost evangelical force in the world
ignores the fact that there are many other cultures and many other ways
of governing that are working fine and don't need replacing
immediately.
4. He fails to see that the American way of life, economy and value
system are not appropriate and even destructive for many other
countries
5. His emphasis on preemptive war has placed the US in an aggressor
position which is fundamentally indistinguishable from many other
aggressor nations down through history, including, I'm sorry to note,
countries such as Nazi Germany.
6. His concept of "War on terrorism" is one of the most deeply flawed
policies and political slogans ever created. You can't have war on
terrorists. Terrorists are individuals, not armies against which you
can wage war. The use of this term is only a ploy to raise the level of
seriousness surrounding the issue to a level that anything goes in
terms of retaliatory methods. But terrorism is a sociological, not a
war problem. You can't have an army fight terrorists. Armies only
become targets for terrorists. Usually terrorists kill innocent people.
Sending soldiers against them just gives the terrorists more
logical and convenient targets.
7. His idea of warring against terrorists just inspires and creates
more terrorists. There are far more terrorists working today that there
were before Sept 11/Iraq. The Bush administration has given tremendous
prestige to Al Qaeda.
8. In the arena of international conflict, you can be somewhat measured
by the size of your enemy. Al Qaeda now has tremendous prestige in the
Arab world, since it has takem n the biggest foe in the world. We have
made them more important, not less.
9. He has never learned the meaning of the phrase "you catch more flies
with honey," which applies now because we need to start convincing Arab
nations that we are not an enemy to their culture and their way of
life, so such extremists don't have the support of their less radical
friends.
10. Due to his unilateral actions of the US in Iraq, in defiance of UN
and World opinion, plus more anti-war demonstrators than any time in
history (many millions, all over the world), the US is now the most
distrusted nation in the world. Most European countries list the US as
the biggest threat to peace in the world.

When a president takes a nation to war for the wrong reasons, alienates
our allies, fails to prevent military prison scandals, bankrupts the
economy while favoring the wealthy, undoes years of environmental
protection legislation, and engenders a completely polarized US
electorate, and yet accepts no responsibility for these or any mistakes
of any kind, you have to start asking yourself just how many things can
a president do completely wrong and still expect to get elected again?

I don't necessarily agree with everything Kerry has to say. I had not
felt recently like the Democrats had a handle on how to run the
economic needs of the country. But, even so, I feel that Kerry is a
fiscally responsible democrat, and furthermore, I feel that there are
so many negatives with the Bush administration that it is really time
to let him go.

To me, Bush is not even a good republican, since republicans supposedly
advocate smaller government and he has added more bureaucracy; since
republicans are known to demand civil liberty (especially to have guns)
but his Patriot Act stuff has been more intrusive on privacy with less
results than anything imaginable; and since republicans are supposedly
for a balanced budget, but he has spent us into a serious hole.

And still no WMD no justify it.

I know that some of you may admire his Christian stance. I'm glad that
he found Christ as a way out of his serious alcoholism. But I do think
that he relies too much on faith sometimes, and not enough on reason.

I know some of you may think that the republicans are better with
money. But I would say, "not this Republican."

I believe that there really are no good reasons to vote for George, and
that even staunch Republicans should bite the bullet this time and
sneak across the aisle.

You can always hope for a better representative of the party next time.

I was hoping Colin Powell would run, but after that little trip to the
U.N., he kind of faded from view.

Some of you may also think "stay the course" in Iraq, since Bush has
the experience to see it through. But I don't think that we should
expect the crew that mistakenly got us into Iraq and who bungled the
post-war situation to get us out of there. They have two strikes
against them. I say pull them out of the game before they do any more
damage

Iraq is an ugly mess, and I don't envy Kerry the job of cleaning up,
but I think that we have to send a message to the world that WE are
willing to change and learn from our mistakes, even if George isn't
ready.

I'm just writing this because I'm concerned that some of you will vote
for George, and I wanted to put in my two cents for the challenger. We
know what we'll get with George. I doubt that Kerry will do worse, and
believe that he may do much, much better.


Okay, that's it. Thanks for reading...
Love to you all,

-Paul


p.s. - I believe Kerry will win anyway. But I hope you'll chip in with
your vote.