Has anyone else noticed that when George Bush says the word “power,” it sounds an awful lot like when some dillhole redneck says “power” when he’s saying “White Power?”

Since when did it become OK to talk on a cellphone during a school class?

I have a nice dress shirt, several in fact, and the last buttonhole is horizontal instead of vertical. Why?

Despite the gargantuan efforts of the Republican National Convention, I’m not all that frightened. At least, not of terrorist activity. Not because I feel protected by the government, but because when it’s my time, it’s my time. However, the GOP’s fear tactics made me wonder something: if I lived in a city with larger targets than the local mall and/or resided in a place that had already been hit, and were afraid, would I feel safer based on the current administration’s ostensibly resolute assault on terrorism?

While many contend the only way to reduce terrorism is to create social change and decrease the conditions that breed it – poverty and military attacks among them – the current administration has done neither. Though Bush and his neo-conservative buddies have begun their first foray into world democracy, which they believe is social change, this attempt, when done via military invasion, is in actuality no different to the individuals being forced into democracy than being forced to endure some other form of government in which they have little to no input.

Case in point: in May 2003, elections took place in Mosul. However, when members of the 18-member council were selected, they were chosen by a group of approximately 200 local leaders; not via the one person, one vote system indicative of democracy (no electoral college jokes, please). This is not democracy or ‘effective’ social change. Thus, it does nothing to eliminate the conditions that breed terrorism. In fact, many would argue the incursion into an Iraq that previously had no direct government connection to terrorist activity has done nothing more than create the greatest recruiting tool the terrorists ever had.

In regard to Homeland Security, many, if not all states, have yet to receive the funds promised to adequately secure our homeland, forcing the transfer of funds from social services and public safety to homeland security tasks. According to the Center for Defense Information, only about one-third of the 2003 Pentagon budget increase over pre-September 11 numbers funds programs and activities closely related to homeland security or counterterrorism operations. Plus, the Bush effort has underfunded the Coast Guard and Bureau of Customs and Border Protection – key in protecting our borders.

As far as I can tell, a few guys with connections here and there have been arrested, though Osama is still no where to be found. And three years after 9/11, the Bush administration may now be doing something substantial, though they had to be led kicking and screaming to even accept the creation of a 9/11 Commission. But it’s taken far too long, and it comes far too close to the election to seem like an honest effort. The least he could’ve done was to have someone fired, and Tenet’s resignation doesn’t count.

So, as we edge closer to 1,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq – one of whom I knew personally – I feel no safer, and no more confident that Bush will eliminate one of the world’s oldest professions. In fact, I feel more afraid that our inadequate and locally over-intrusive, yet ineffective (Patriot Act), efforts will sacrifice the very values America is seemingly trying to defend and spread to the rest of the globe. That’s what frightens me.