Michael Rectenwald responds to a CLG visitor who asks us "Are you serious?" [in our opposition to the Bush regime]

CLG visitor J. K. sent the Citizens for Legitimate Government a letter on January 26, 2003, asking our staff if we were serious about our criticism of and opposition to the Bush dictatorship, noting that we were certainly privileged to be able to protest the impending W-ar in Iraq on January 18, 2003. One of the gems from the letter: "George Bush's vision for this nation is one of the things that makes him great. It is interesting that people like you have so quickly forgotten the events of September 11, 2001 - you are content to just let it happen again."

The text below is Michael Rectenwald's reply to J.K.'s letter, which was written after Mike originally replied to J.K.

Here is Michael Rectenwald's reply:

Mr. K.:

Of course, you fail to address a single charge we've made. Until you answer these charges, we consider your responses to be nothing but rhetorical hot-air, typical rightwing bluster, full of nothing but threats, ad hominem remarks and epithets, and rhetorically-charged nothings. Answer these charges, one by one, or you have said NOTHING to us, or any of our readers, who will be waiting for your answer. We highly doubt you will have a single articulate utterance that will actually address these issues. So far, all you have done has been to make empty rhetorical sounds, much the ditto head follower of the rightwing mouthpieces of lies and propaganda.

You fail to address the charges we have made and to answer to this Resident's failings and commissions of wrongdoing in the following counts:

1. the 6.5 TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT, after having been handed RECORD surpluses from the HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL Clinton era;

2. the failing economy, with more bankruptcies than in ANY TIME IN US HISTORY, the highest unemployment rate in thirty years, and the worst recession in decades, at least;

3. the complete reversals in environmental protection, including but not limited to:

• Produced new rules to speed up logging in national forests,
• Rolled back protections of 58 million acres from roads and developments,
• Eased pollution controls for power plants and factories,
• Rejected new fuel-efficiency standards,
• Sped up permit-granting for power companies,
• Lifted a ban on snowmobiles in parks,
• Proposed 51,000 new natural gas wells,
• Removed limits on coal producers for dumping mountaintop fill in streams,
• Reduced EPA fines of polluters by 64%,
• Opened up Padre Island to drilling,
• Halted funding for several superfund sites,
• Replaced scientists who don’t support the administration’s views,
• Rejected the Kyoto global warming treaty,
• And much, much more;

4. the connections to and participation in corporate crime, including insider trading at Harken and Halliburton, including the Enron multi-billion dollar rip-off of California whilst Cheney held closed-door meetings with the very same company to discuss his "energy policy," a complete rip-off; for this complicity alone, Cheney belongs behind bars;

5. The acknowledged erosion of personal rights otherwise guaranteed by the Constitution's first ten amendments, with the (un)Patriot Act and the Homeland (in)Security bill; to wit:
    the mass-round-up and incarceration of foreigners; kangaroo courts; depriving at least two United States citizens of their constitutional rights by means of military incarceration; interference with the constitutional right of defendants in criminal cases to lawyers; violating and subverting the Posse Comitatus Act; unlawful and unreasonable searches and seizures; violating the First Amendments rights of the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government for redress of grievances;

6. The FAILURE of Bush to heed THE DOCUMENTED WARNINGS THAT BIN LADEN'S NETWORK WOULD HIJACK DOMESTIC AIRLINERS--INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHING AT ALL, THIS RESIDENT STAYED ON ****VACATION*** FOR THREE ADDITIONAL WEEKS AND FAILED TO RETURN TO HIS F*CKING JOB! A CEO WHO DID THE SAME WOULD BE FIRED AND SUED BY HIS STOCKHOLDERS! Bush is AT LEAST criminally negligent, and his own family's connections to the bin Laden family vis a vis the Carlyle group attracted the attention of even the legal rightwing watchdog group, Judicial Watch!

7. THE FACT THAT THIS RESIDENT IS PREPARED AND READY TO WAGE AN ILLEGAL UNPROVOKED WAR! ILLEGAL ON THE FOLLOWING COUNTS AND ACCORDING TO THE FOLLOWING INTERNATIONAL LAWS AND domestic laws:
    the Hague Regulations on land warfare, the rules of customary international law set forth in the Hague Rules of Air Warfare, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol: thereto, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).

These and other charges are pending your response.

Again, we highly doubt that you can really contest us on the grounds we have set out. You are incapable of doing so, not because you are stupid, but because there ARE NO GROUNDS ON WHICH YOU CAN CONTEST US!! WE NEVER LOSE IN OUR ARGUMENTS WITH THE RIGHTWING!

Sincerely,

Michael Rectenwald
CLG Founder and Chair

January 26, 2003

[Letter below, from J.K., that prompted Mike Rectenwald's response:]

Again, I support your right to voice your opinions; but I also have the right to voice mine. I don't have much tolerance for stupidity - and your message reeks of stupidity. This goes way, way beyond disagreement. To accuse Bush of criminal negligence because of the attacks of September 11, 2001, proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that people like you do not want to know the truth - you spew forth such ridiculous notions that I simply won't waste my words or intelligence on people who won't even fake listening.

I pity you and your like. As for the picture in my e-mail - why would you think that a republican, conservative and lover of freedom and decency wouldn't want a nature scene? This is where the propaganda machine of the liberal left is failing - right now the majority of this nation support our president and the direction this nation is taking. Eight years of the Clinton/Gore debacle is over - we now move forward. With you or without you. Frankly, I don't care if you come along for the ride or not.

Write back if you like - but you'll just be wasting your words because I just can't stand stupid people.

J.K.
January 26, 2003

Lori Price responds to a CLG visitor who asks us "Are you serious?" [in our opposition to the Bush regime]