Let me start off by saying that I am not strongly a Democrat or Republican. I tend to go different ways on different issues. Let me continue to say that I do not think that Al Gore would have done much better than Bush has with recent events. Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, on to my opinion.
The terrorist attack on 9-11 was one of the most tragic events in American history. There is no denying that. It has been called an act of war by many. The problem with that is terrorists are hard to "war" against. They don't really have their own country (although some help them out more than others). They don't come out and line up on the battle field. They won't come to a treaty table. They are fighting for their beliefs, skewed as they may be. America was hurt greatly by terrorists. The attack of 9-11 caused many Americans to realize that they were vulnerable. We typically only see reports of suicide bombers from other countries. It shook our faith in our country when we were attacked.
The Bush Administration needed to do something. They couldn't just take the attack lying down. They gave us a figurehead, Osama bin Laden. This gave us our much needed leader of the bad guys. Then they told us where he was hiding, Afghanistan. Therefore, we went to Afghanistan to find him. We took it over, but we couldn't catch him. Terrorists have no problems with moving. I was on the same page with the administration up through this point. We had declared war on terrorism. We were improving our security, and we were hunting down terrorists. Then, somehow, Iraq got involved.
Somehow, Iraq was pointed as the next place to go. This time Sadam Hussien was the evil leader. Although Republicans were quick to point out that things might not have been as bad if Clinton had done something about bin Laden, they failed to mention that Hussien would not had been a problem if Bush Sr. had properly removed him during Desert Storm. I'm sure this was simply an oversight. We proclaimed that Iraq harbored terrorists and that they held weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, we must do a pre-emptive strike before they attack us. What happened to the American ideal of isolationism? We have since invaded and taken over Iraq, yet we have not found weapons of mass destruction. We also failed to capture or kill Sadam Hussien.
During this time, the Department of Homeland Security was created. Also created and passed by Congress was the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is possibly one of the most frightening pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. The Patriot Act basically gives the Department of Justice the power to do whatever it wants, it just has to call you a terrorist while it does it. It gives the DoJ increased phone tap and search powers. For example, it has now been used to prosecute a guy running a meth lab. Instead of getting the normal drug law penalties, he is now facing life in prison for "manufacturing chemical weapons." The slippery slope only continues to get worse from here.
I am a big music fan. I love all types of music. I even admit that I like a lot of the top 40, but what the RIAA is doing to music is making me hate it. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a grouping of the five largest music recording groups in America. The group works together to "protect their intellectual property (IP)" and basically make as much money as they can. The RIAA has already be found guilty by the FTC of fixing the price of CDs. They all got together and basically agreed to not sell their CDs below a certain price. Here is a link for more info on stuff they have done. Basically, they are killing the music industry as a whole. They do not care about the artists or the fans, but only lining their own pockets. They have recently begun suing people who use file sharing programs to download music on the Internet. They have even gone so far to sue a twelve year old girl who lives in public housing.
Recently, Michael Booth of the Denver Post wrote an article comparing the music industry with the movie industry. It is an interesting read. Basically, he compares the Chicago sound track with the DVD. He points out how the DVD is loaded with extras and only costs about $2 more. So what should we do? Obviously, it is tough to take on the recording industry as a whole. You can attempt to boycott buying CDs put out by any major label (the artists don't really get any profits from them anyway). You can also try to support independent artists. One I would recommend would be Fishboy. He is Donna Jo's brother.
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