Speech Found In Mailbox Of Supreme Underdog On Super Tuesday

[Joanne98]

Between now and the November election, the public and the political professionals expect me to behave like a traditional candidate. Avoid important issues and instead focus on abstractions like "change" and non political, life style issues like for or against abortion, gay marriage and owning machine guns. I'm supposed to support the deportation of immigrants and stand for lowering taxes. I'm supposed to act like the toughest leader in the world, meaning I'll send US troops anywhere to fight "terrorism," or whatever.

Candidates say these things because their advisers tell them so. They follow such suggestions because above all else they want to govern, no matter what the agenda. Mitt Romney, for example, favored and opposed abortion and gay rights. Like other candidates, he changed positions more often than a two year old playing with a light switch. I've decided to break with tradition. President Bush in his State of the Union smirk refused to offer a realistic assessment of our nation - how our people are doing and where we stand with the rest of world.

Voters, if you know my assessment and plans you can then vote for me on the real issues and not just on my flaming desire to have the most powerful job in the world.

First, I'm grateful to Bush because he dramatized the decline of the US Empire. He never used the "e" word, of course, but nevertheless the son of Bush I who proclaimed the New World Order wrote the obituary for his father's elusive dream.

That imprudent brat - I avoid stronger words -- has turned trillions in surplus into trillions of deficit, hastened the fall of the dollar and the decline of US prestige in the world. He has also helped invert the American dream into a nightmare.

Our people have become the most stressed-out folks in the world (not counting countries at war or famine). Middle class young men and women fear they'll never own a home or a decent job or have secure health insurance.

In the first seven years of the 21st Century, the income gap between rich and poor (bottom 40%) grew wider as manufacturing jobs continued to disappear. The percentage of workers with work-based health insurance - or any health coverage -- shrank. Poverty grew alongside consumer credit debt and the number of home foreclosures. Each day we confront a rising cost of gasoline and home heating fuel. In truly poor neighborhoods we see hunger - a shameful situation in the richest country in the world.

Excuse me please, members of the media for interjecting realism into the soap opera aura that you all have created around the current primary elections. I have watched endless reports about gossip) this candidate cried because her feeling were hurt) and that one felt betrayed when the race issue emerged, but only as a way to smear another candidate. Mostly, the candidates said little about reality and nothing that offers even a hint about the real issues of the nation or its empire.

Look how US health care has fallen - a long way from number one - while pieces of our infrastructure collapse along with it. I'm talking about the broken levees in New Orleans, the bridge in Minnesota and the crumbling school houses in much of the country.

The US economy is or is about to fall into recession. While Bush turned a surplus of trillions into a deficit of trillions, Europe and emerging Asian powers didn't piss away their economic surpluses. China capitalized on US preoccupations with "security" in the Middle East and sent its investors throughout the world to buy up or get stock in raw material and energy resources. As the US political system creaks on without adding oil - pardon the pun - to its creaky ideological foundations, China and Europe, some other nations have transcended the 20th century themes and actually begun to prepare themselves for the realities of this 21st century.

Our government depends on once despised nations like China to keep it afloat and to fund futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which can be won. Yet, the other candidates refuse to declare total opposition to the wars, and admit that any support for them ever was a mistake. The leading Republican predicts more wars if he wins, while pledging to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a century if necessary. Has he smoked some of Afghanistan's bumper opium crop?
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3355

[ursi]

1. embarassing