The following was just written by Charley Reese of the Orlando Sentinel,
>a VERY CONSERVATIVE columnist with the Orlando Sentinel. If you know
>the writer and his strongly conservative reputation, you should find it
>eye opening. Note particularly what he says about John Kerry.
>
>__________________________________________________
>
>Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet
>
>Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's
>re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war - Dick
>Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of
>neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers.
>
>
>
>I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a
>frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his
>administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the
>world of any president in my memory. It's no wonder the president avoids
>press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can
>barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah
>of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own
>president at their joint press conference recently.
>
>John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to
>think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than
>Bush's comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's
>unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very
>intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his
>presidential election efforts.
>
>But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he observed
>that people who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and
>never will be. People who think of themselves as conservatives will
>really display their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting
>for Bush. Bush is as far from being a conservative as you can get.
>Well, he fooled me once, but he won't fool me twice.
>
>It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly
>increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution
>and the rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of
>American jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits
>don't matter, and that people should not know what their government is
>doing. Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president
>in the 20th century. His administration leans dangerously toward the
>authoritarian. It's no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted
>a few Arab-Americans of supporting terrorism. What would you do if you
>found
>yourself arrested and a federal prosecutor whispers in your ear that
>either you can plea-bargain this or the president will designate you an
>enemy combatant and you'll be held incommunicado for the duration?
>
>This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but
>because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost
>restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is
>not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in
>the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush
>administration. Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us,
>Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace.
>
>I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man
>in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us
>with it. Go to Kerry's Web site www.johnkerry.com ) and read some of
>the magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal
>more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.
>
>Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey,
>windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks
>French. It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed
>people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and
>dispels all illusions about war.