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Give the Money You Would Have Spent on My Christmas Present to the Dennis Kucinich for President 2008 Campaign!

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Message Lonna Van Horn
"We Democrats were put back in power to bring some sanity back to our nation. We were expected to do what we said we were going to do - get out of Iraq."

- Dennis Kucinich

With -- as is usual with all things concerning Dennis -- little attention from the media, yesterday (Dec. 12, 2006) Dennis Kucinich announced his candidacy for the 2008 run for president of the United States.

Those of us who know about Dennis and believe in him should all donate money to his campaign NOW!! To that end, I am informing all the people who normally buy me Christmas presents to donate half of what they would spend on my gift to the Dennis Kucinich presidential campaign. I encourage those reading this article to do the same.

Dennis is the rare candidate who is not owned by corporations or the Israeli PAC. Because he is not -- because, as did Paul Wellstone, Dennis truly believes our tax dollars should be used for things like universal health care that would actually benefit "regular people" (not to mention the soldiers returning from Iraq) -- rather than the rich and corporations, the media ridicules this "every man" who was raised poor, still lives simply and does not treat money as a god -- the child so bright and hungry for knowledge he taught himself to read when he was three years old when his family was living in a car -- and dismisses him as someone who "can't win." I say universal health care would benefit our soldiers because, as it did with Agent Orange and with Gulf War Syndrome, the government will likely fight paying for health care for many veterans with hard to categorize ailments until it is forced to do so. If health care were universally available to all Americans, such foot-dragging would not have an impact on their care, plus tax dollars would not be wasted paying lawyers to fight on both sides of the issues. Many soldiers who fought in those wars died while waiting for their cases to be decided

If Dennis raises enough money early on, perhaps the loud-mouthed stuffed shirts in our joke of a main-stream media who would rather listen to themselves talk than give their guests a chance to explain their proposed policies will be forced to take him seriously. Are you listening Chris Matthews?

Dennis has been right on almost everything. He is one of the principled Congress people, who, with the likes of Jim McDermot, Jim Leach and Ron Paul, chose to do the right thing rather than the popular thing. At political risk to themselves they chose not to go along with the vote to invade Iraq -- a vote the majority of their constituents supported at the time because the deliberate deceptions, lies and fear-mongering of the Bush administration caused way too many of them to believe, wrongly, that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 terrorist attack, al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin, and was a threat to the United States.

Instead Dennis who -- unlike our current president and many of the neocons -- has the capacity to think and reason, knew (as both Colin Powel and Condaleeza Rice had admitted in early 2001) that Iraq was no real threat to the United States or even to Iraq's own neighbors.

Dennis is not a fool. He does not see war as something simple, glorious, or desirable, but as something that destroys and impoverishes countries and their people not only during the war, but for decades after the war is over. Some countries never recover from the damage inflicted on them due to war. That is likely to be especially true of a nation bombarded with weapons laced with depleted uranium.

Kucinich knows, as did Jesus Christ, that violence begets violence. The violence inherent in the Iraq War creates more enemies for America every day, and those enemies have an easy target in our soldiers in the chaos the ineptitude, stupidity and short-sightedness of Bush/Rumsfeld created in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis believe the American presence there is only making the situation worse. Many of the soldiers see that as well. One quoted in the blog "A Soldier's Thoughts" said "Show me a terrorist nowadays that we didn't help create here in Iraq." Another said "Perhaps you think we are making lives better here? Maybe you haven't seen the same things I have."

For a truly scathing look at the Iraq War and the people who instigated it penned by a soldier read "After Pat's Birthday" by Kevin Tillman, former Army Ranger and brother of fellow Ranger and football hero Pat Tillman. "After Pat's Birthday"

Dennis wants Congress to stop funding the war - to use the money available now to get our troops safely out of Iraq. Dennis has read enough history to know that war is a desirable and profitable state of affairs for the military-industrial complex which donates obscene amounts of money to those politicians who advocate violence as a way of solving the world's problems. Halliburton, for instance, is the largest single beneficiary of the Iraq War, and gave obscene amounts of money to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004 because it was obvious Bush, and especially Cheney had its profit interests more at heart than it did the well-being of America's poor and even its soldiers. Dwight Eisenhower saw the danger the influence of the military-industrial complex on Congress, and two-time Congressional Medal of Honor (one of only two such two time winners in history) Marine Major-General Smedley Butler said in his "War is a Racket" speech seventy years ago that the only way to stop war was to take the money out of waging it. He advocated nationalizing all industries engaged in making war six months before the conflict was to begin. He said war was fought by the many to "benefit the very few." It is self-evident that countries that spend half of their money for "defense" have little money left to spend on taking care of the needs of their people. Historically, nations fall when they over extend their reach.

It is as unlikely that children of the CEO's of those corporations are in harms way in Iraq as it is that the children or grandchildren of the people who advocated war or voted for it -- Barbara and Jenna Bush, Chelsea Clinton, and anyone from Dick Cheney's family come to mind -- are serving in the military.

When running for president in 2004 Dennis called for a decrease in funding for the Department of Offense -- It lost the right to be called the "Department of Defense" a long time ago since by far the largest percentage of its money is used to swell the profits of the military-industrial complex -- not to actually take care of our troops. It also pays the obscene wages and expenses of the private contractors hired by out government to perform services in Iraq and other countries. Services that are sadly not being performed or are being performed at ridiculous cost by outsiders when they could be done by the Iraqi people themselves who are desperately in need of work. After all, 30% or higher unemployment and lack of security are the reasons millions of Iraqis, most of them the educated and affluent -- the doctors, the engineers-- the ones Iraq can least afford to lose, but the ones who have the money needed to get out.-are leaving Iraq. There are nearly as many private contractors in Iraq as there are American service people, and they are not under the control of the United States military. Dennis called for the creation of a Department of Peace.
As "a Lebanese immigrant" wrote so eloquently, under rule by the neocons and their corporate masters America has lost her moral compass - everything that made her the former touchstone of people's dreams of democracy.

With Dennis as president and a like-minded Congress, perhaps America and her people currently lost in the violent, greed driven, materialistic wasteland that is the Bush presidency, could find its soul again.

I am going to begin wearing my "Kucinich for president" t-shirt immediately, and "Dennis Kucinich for President 2008" is going on the tailgate of my "book truck" today!

For more information on Kucinich or to donate to his campaign: Kucinich for president.
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Lonna Van Horn Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Lonna Gooden VanHorn was born and raised on a small farm in Minnesota. She is the mother of 6, a grandmother, and the wife of a Vietnam veteran.

Formerly a person who did not "get involved" in controversy, the constant lies and deceit of the Bush administration have motivated her to become a trouble maker in her old age.

Archives of some of her articles may be accessed "here" (more...)
 

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