The WOODSHED
Behind the Woodshed
This page has had 316851 visitors so far.
| This is a place where I will air my thoughts and opinions. I am very concerned about what we have become, what we are doing to our kids, what we are doing to the world we live in... it's time some of us started to speak out! To be honest, I have leaned toward the right for most of my adult life. There were exceptions to that rule, but I have usually fallen on the right side of middle on how I have thought and voted. The current administration, though, has made me rethink a lot of what I have stood for over the years. To put it simply, they scare the living crap out of me. Here are some reasons why... My number one concern - the war in Iraq I am a very patriotic person, so anybody who would accuse me otherwise can go blow. I get goose bumps when the American flag comes by in a parade or when I hear a good rendition of the Star Spangled Banner or America the Beautiful. I completely supported our going into Afghanistan. I am proud of our men and women in uniform and I support them as they do their duty. I was a scholarship letter away from being one of them, as a matter of fact. We ARE a great country, but we don't always do the right thing. In the case of Iraq, we have NOT done the right thing. I am not one of the people who bought the bull and supported the war at the beginning but wearied of it as it has worn on. I was against this war from day one. I knew the weapons of mass destruction angle was Bush and the boys blowing smoke (or maybe oil) up our ... well, you know... and it was well known at the time that Sadaam and Osama weren't in cahoots with each other. How could a country full of well-educated people like us have been so naive? The cock and bull story about how it's better to fight the war on terror over there than over here is a joke. We've stirred up so much hate against us in the Arab world now that surely there WILL be more terrorist attacks on us here - it'll only be a matter of when. Our fighting the good fight over there isn't going to stop that from happening. It has only added fuel to the fire. My suspicion has always been that it's all been about controlling the oil. Part of it also may have been Bush wanting to finish what his daddy never did finish. This may be wrong or right, but something stunk from the beginning in this whole Iraq thing whatever it was. The coup de gras was when we were stupid enough to re-elect the men who got us into it. WAKE UP AMERICA!! I don't believe it's possible right now for us to just pull out of Iraq. I quite honestly do not have any ideas for a solution to this mess. All I know is that it was as wrong as it could be for us to start it, and I think Bush needs to keep his military mouth shut now about Iran. That situation NEEDS to be solved with diplomacy or some other way. We are spread too thin as it is. We cannot fund or people another war right now, and I can about guarantee that the country would not be behind this one, even if something were to get trumped up to blow smoke up our rear ends again. The Haves and the Have Nots Somehow, I don't think the founders of our country meant for our system to be all about the rich getting filthier rich and the middle class getting poorer. Isn't this lords vs peasants thing part of what they were fleeing from when they came over here? The slices of the pie that corporate executives and others are getting now is out of control! WAKE UP AGAIN AMERICA! I heard on the radio the other day that 15 years ago, the average CEO compensation was about 40 times what the average worker in his/her comany was. Now it is 400 times what the average worker gets. I cannot verify the numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me. Executives of companies that have been run into the ground, where people have been laid off, where bad decisions have been made at the top should not get bonuses and should not get pay increases. Way too much value has been placed on corporate heads. Way to little value has been placed on the people in the trenches. Way too many jobs are getting outsourced overseas and to Mexico. The lower middle and low end of the spectrum has hardly grown at all. I just got a part time job about a month ago at a convenience store and just about dropped my drawers when they told me what they would be paying me. It was 25 cents more an hour than I had started at in a retail establishment almost 20 years ago! I think part of what has kept us allowing this to happen is the fact that so many people are just borrowing more and more to maintain the status quo. Way too many ordinary people are going into debt up to their ears trying to continue living the lifestyle they feel they are entitled to. One of these days it is all going to crash and burn. It HAS to. All of these credit cards and second and third mortgages are going to catch up with us eventually. Before that happens, why don't we speak out and put an end to this ever-growing gap between the haves and the have nots? Maybe we should start attending the annual meetings of the companies whose stocks we hold instead of just sending in the proxy card. Maybe we should stop electing politicians who give tax cuts to 6 figure people and almost no cuts to the rest of us. Maybe we should put our collective foot down about outsourcing good paying jobs overseas. Maybe we should stop turning the other way when we see illegal immigrants come in here, happy to take the hideously low paying jobs that they take, and helping to keep the low end as low as it is. The "American Dream" is getting to be out of reach for more and more people, and it will become the American Nightmare for some of these people who have gotten themselves too far in hock to ever see the light of day. I challenge Mr. Bush and other people on the far right, many of whom are filthy rich and claim to be good Christians, to look in the Gospel of Luke and see what it has to say about greed. Oh, and speaking of greed, we also pay athletes and other celebrities way too much. Good lord... where are our priorities? The same people who are voting NO on the school referendums are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars to go see a game or a concert. Something is very, very wrong with that picture. WAKE UP! MORE TO COME.... |
| About This Page [Top] |
| Graphics on this page were hand crafted from scratch and from other graphics by Martha Decker on a Gateway 2000 P5-75 Pentium PC, an IBM 300GL PC and a Dell 8300 using Corel Photo Paint and Paint Shop Pro. The page itself was created using Hot Dog Pro 7.03 for Windows. |
| The background tile on this page was derived from a tile I found on the Corel Photo Paint Plus 5 CD. |
| Click here to view it or click here to view the JPEG version. |
| The CGI counter on this page is an adaptation of the Text Counter that uses Server Side Includes which can be found at Matt's Script Archive. |
| The WOODSHED Index | ||||
| [Neat-O] | [Graphics] | [Computing] | [Opinion] | [Learning] |
| [Entertainment] | [Bookshed] | [HTML] | [Weather] | [Reading] |
| [Travel] | [Photos] | [Websearch] | [Wheels] | [Hobbies] |
| [Minnesota] | [Postcard] | [Causes] | [Genealogy] | [Sports] |
| [Superior] | [Christmas] | [Women] | [Feds] | [About] |
| [Forest] | [Xmas MIDI] | [Ragtime] | [Cows] | [Feedback] |
Search This Site
Home to the Woodshed
|
Fight Back... REPORT UNSOLICITED EMAIL!
| Email addresses and other personal information listed on these pages may NOT be gathered or used in any way for commercial or adult bulk "Spam" emailing lists! |
Copyright © 2006 Martha Decker
Last modified on Sunday, March 19, 2006