Why wouldn't someone rather vote for Bush than for Kerry?
Can you name one difference between them? Not if you only watch mainstream news.
Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can't say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard about it?
Well, I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis - how it's playing, not what's in it.
On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to "shove it," though even there, the context was missing. Except for a brief reference on MSNBC, none of the transcripts I've read mention that the target of her ire works for Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire who financed smear campaigns against the Clintons - including accusations of murder. (CNN did mention Mr. Scaife on its Web site, but described him only as a donor to "conservative causes.") And viewers learned nothing about Mr. Scaife's long vendetta against Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself.
(Triumph of the Trivial,truthout.org)
Yeah, but Kerry is a flip-flopper. Bush is a man of faith.
Biologist Richard Dawkins, in the essay Mind Viruses, defines 'faith as a source of knowledge' as one such mind virus;
"The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that...something that doesn't owe anything to evidence or reason , he feels as totally compelling and convincing....we doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'....
indeed, they may feel the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief...."Hmmm. WMD, anybody?
"The sufferer may find himself behaving intolerantly toward vectors of rival faiths, in extreme cases even killing them (no shit) .
...the prognosis is poor unless he becomes open to modes of thought (emphasis mine- fat chance) that are potentially inimical to his faith, such as the method of scientific reason that may function rather like a piece of antiviral software. If not, this can lead only to greater self-destruction in service of his virtuous beliefs."
Thank the God of the rationalist founders of this constitution for an intelligent man who can change course when the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.
"Men will cease to commit atrocites only when they cease to believe absurdities."
- Voltaire
