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had dinner with him and his super conservative wife who give to Repug causes and asked them:
1) Where is bin Laden and why are we in Iraq? His wife's reply: it doesn't matter where bin Laden is {!} and my bro said we must look at Iraq as part of the broader war on terror against radical Islamists.
I countered that Iraq had nothing to do with 911 and I still don't know why we went there, except for oil and BushCo thought it would be an easy target. I kept saying, whatever happened to finding and killing bin Laden, why did Bush outsource his capture to the Afghan warlords at Tora Bora, and why are we in Iraq when it was bin Laden who perpetrated 911? My bro and his wife had no good response.
2) I asked them why the Bush twins weren't fighting in Iraq, if it was so important to the pResident. I asked if they (bro and wife) would send their own young grown up kids (3 bright, college educated, beautiful young women (2 are new mothers) and a young man with everything going for them) to fight in Iraq. My bro and his wife said that was a ridiculous question because this is a volunteer US army and there is no draft and that's a good thing. I asked if they thought it was fair and right that our "volunteers" are required to do 3 tours of duty and they said, that's what these "volunteers" signed up for.
3) I brought up a recent proposal that's being floated (as in, trial balloon) by some East Coast land trusts and farmland preservation groups. This is to preserve farmland, not just for clean air, water, open space and fresh food, but also for Food Security Zones. That is, there is still some significant farmland left within 1 hr's drive of places like NYC, Baltimore, DC and so on. What if there is a disaster like food contamination caused by terrorism, or the price of oil is so high that it impacts the cost of food in a major way? Isn't it wise to have a Food Security Area within an hour of a major city, in order to be prepared?
My bro's wife said, "If the cost of gas or diesel is high, wealthy people will still be able to buy food." I said it's true some people would still be able to afford it but what about the rest? There would be mass riots and looting for food and anything else of value. My bro said it if got to that point, Food Security Areas wouldn't help but storing food and oil would. I said, we don't have space to store enough oil to keep us out of a terrible situation like that for long and my bro said we have plenty of oil---two months' worth for the whole country!!! I said that's not enough to last us through the winter so we'd better get better prepared that that.
My impression was that neither my bro or his wife had thought very deeply about any of these things. I think they're floating in a comfortable bubble of Bushco conservative Koolaid. We really have to burst the repug bubble in '06.
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