If GOP doesn’t change its ways, Obama will win More of my Republican friends admit that President Obama will win another term. It’s hard for him to lose when the Republicans keep hitting every tennis shot into the net.
Today’s GOP is anything but conservative if you use the classical definition, summed up by Otto von Bismarck in 1883: “To make a man conservative, you must give him something to conserve.” Instead of following that simple advice, Republicans are dedicated to the proposition that the less the middle class has, the better off its robber-baron backers will be. The GOP platform guarantees Obama another term, and he knows it.
Here is a simple road map Republicans should follow to become a constructive force in government:
* Balance budgets via progressive income taxes and put Social Security and Medicare on sound financial footing (which requires means testing), not wipe them out of existence.
* Require the government to invest FICA collections rather than spending them on operating expenses.
* Support single payer, the only thing that will bring Medicare costs under control.
* Stop allowing our allies to play us like a fiddle, handing us the whole burden of their defense.
* Take Ron Paul’s advice and stop starting wars. End the ones we’ve started by bringing the troops home.
* Offer vocational education to students who cannot absorb a college curriculum.
* Revert back to the principles of Hamiltonian economics that made our country the strongest in world history: What we buy here, we make here. What we make here, we buy here.
Will the GOP do it? Not a chance. That’s why I’m writing in Ron Paul this year.
Richard Kreutzberg
Bethesda
Iran was directly involved in 9/11 attacks
A federal court in Manhattan entered an historic ruling that reveals new facts about Iran’s support of al Qaeda in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case. Government evidence also confirmed that Iran facilitated the escape of al Qaeda leaders captured during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and provided them safe haven inside Iran.
This ruling backs up what most of us suspected: Iran was deeply involved in the attacks against our country
Al Eisner
Silver Spring
Displaying religious symbols is basic human right
Some dyed-in-the-wool secularists call for the suppression of religious symbols in public as well as state-subsidized private schools. But education based on a set of ideas — whether religious or not — is a public service to the extent that it serves parents who want that kind of education for their children.
Symbols help express beliefs and values defining human identity. Suppressing religious symbols contributes to regimentation more proper to egalitarian totalitarianism than to free societies and amounts to neglecting a deep-rooted cultural tradition to which most parents subscribe.
A statement from the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights concerning the head scarf ban in France says: “It is not at the discretion of a state to determine which manifestations are legitimate as long as they do not violate other people’s basic human rights or do not endanger public safety, health or morals.”
Federico Gomez
Girona, Spain
