----- Original Message -----
From: RAH-INSIGHT
To: RAH-INSIGHT

Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 1:19 PM
Subject: Conservatives seeing, speaking the truth.



An interesting and informed perspective from a Florida Conservative: You

might be interested in the following just written by Charley Reese of the

Orlando Sentinel. If you know the writer and his strongly conservative

reputation, you should find it eye opening. Note particularly what he says

about John Kerry. The conservative journalists Robert Novak and William

Kristol happen to be saying the same things. Here's a column from the VERY

CONSERVATIVE Charley Reese of the Orlando Sentinel.



______________________________________________



Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet



Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's re-election,

they are really voting for the architects of war - Dick Cheney, Donald

Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative

ideologues and their corporate backers. I have sadly come to the conclusion

that President Bush is merely a frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated

by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously

simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory. It's no wonder

the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue

cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab

king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English

than our own president at their joint press conference recently.



John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think

and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's

comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate

that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal

to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.



But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he observed that

people who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never

will be. People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display

their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is

as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once,

but he won't fool me twice. It is not at all conservative to balloon

government spending, to vastly increase the power of government, to show

contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, or to tell people that

foreign outsourcing of American jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and

trade deficits don't matter, and that people should not know what their

government is doing.



Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th

century. His administration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian. It's

no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few Arab-Americans of

supporting terrorism. What would you do if you found yourself arrested and a

federal prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can plea-bargain

this or the president will designate you an enemy combatant and you'll be

held incommunicado for the duration?



This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but

because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost

restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is not

only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in the world

thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration.



Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel, North Korea

and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace. I will swallow a lot of

petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with

brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it.



Go to Kerry's Web site www.johnkerry.com

http://us.f121.mail.yahoo.com/ym/www.johnkerry.com> and read some of the

magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more to

Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe. Besides, it would be

fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays

the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French. It would be good to have a man

in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a

sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions.