Al Gore spoke today- why isn't he President again?

[catch22girl]

Al Gore spoke today in DC, I watched it on LINK-TV but it's also available to see at Moveon.org. Go here to read basically what he said: Gore's Nov. 9th speech. Everyone should read what he said, or watch him speak. It's about an hour and a half but its time well spent.

I'm cutting the rest of my thoughts. As most of you know, one of my deepest held beliefs right now is the need to Impeach Bush or get him out of office by 2004. I'm not going to hedge that either, I want him and his administration gone before they cause any more damage. And just how much damage have they already caused? A lot --

I've spent a lot of time reading about what's been happening to civil liberties and the abuse of the constitution under the Bush admin. There's more here to fear than JUST Ashcroft. Gore's speech today shed some light on things that I didn't know, and I've been paying pretty close attention. For instance I had no idea that two of the hijackers had actually purchased tickets under their OWN names. Or were living in San Diego and listed in the phone book. How could our government have not found them? There's something really rotten at the heart of our current administration. I knew it but every day gives me more evidence to support the feeling. Gore nicely summarized the real problem with the attack of citizen's rights AND secrecy:

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.

Gore also had a lot of good points about the necessity for the government to be open to public scrutiny and the dangers of one branch of gov't achieving too much power. I loved this speech and when he compared the Patriot Act to the Tonkin Gulf Resoultion I wanted to stand up and cheer. There's also a lot of Watergate parallels, but even more frightening is as Gore points out that the government does sometimes curtail and hurt the rights of citizens during War, but that always ends after the War. Here though, the government's telling us that the 'War on Terror' might never end, that it might go on forever and this is only the beginning.

Gore also talked about how the administration is using fear to further their policies. And it's true. I'm afraid to go into NYC right now because of all the warnings and the threats and the fact that it doesn't seem that the government is really doing *anything* to protect us. Gore's speech so nicely laid out what can happen when everything gets politicized though - and he's right, the Republicans have made the war on terror a partisan issue and the part of his speech when he's talking about how the Homeland Security Agency helped find the missing Democratic senators from Texas? Sent a shiver down my spine.

There's scary things happening here, things that are being hidden from the Public and even other sections of the government. In some ways I got the same feeling listening to Gore as I did from reading Michael Moore's new book. Gore ended his speech by saying that the Patriot Act must be repealed, but people in the audience were yelling 'impeach'!

Also, I somehow missed that the Gov't was prosecuting Greenpeace? That's wrong on so many levels.

Considering what the Supreme Court and the Press did to him, Gore's surprisingly not angry or bitter. I really wish he would run again.

I don't think anyone should be with me on election night 2004 if Bush is re-elected. It might make me lose all faith in humanity. But i'm full of much love for Gore right now.

Comments

[queen-kiwi.livejournal.com]

Palmer for President. *points to campaign signs*

The government is prosecuting Greenpeace? For what? *furious*

[catch22girl]

YES! Palmer for President *waves banner*

apparently they're prosecuting them for a non-violent injunction or something they held to stop the exportation of rare wood from the amazon. That's in violation of some law or something from the 1800s(!?!!?) and yeah. SO f'd up. Especially cause they just told 50 power plants that were in violation of the clean air act that oh yeah they weren't anymore. Grrrr.

I wanna move to Canada.

[thekiwi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but before you move up north, lets pray as hard as we can that enough people are fed up by the 2004 election to change things.

<----in the anybody but Bush category and THIS election I can VOTE!