Bush’s Violin
I wish blame for our current state of affairs were Bush’s solely to carry, the truth is that he is simply the latest in a line of inept and corrupt presidents who share in this mess. Much like Rome, indeed.
Posts tagged ‘politics’
Further Evidence Wikipedia is For Amusement-Only
Call me crazy, but I’ve just never been a fan of wikipedia or the concept of self-regulated, community-sourced ‘facts’. The power-trip factor combined with anonymity make it a great place to push an agenda and silence opinions to the contrary. Need more proof? O’reilly Radar talks about wikiscanner, a tool to view edits to wikipedia via IP/domain. Oh Fox News, you never cease to underwhelm.
Maybe It’s Time to Burn My iPhone
Here’s why…yes that’s Karl Rove, and yes he’s screwing around with his iPhone clad in a Twins cap while the president inspects (while tossing out more blame) the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Maybe this device has already jumped the shark - so to speak.
Stuff It Up Your Tailpipe
Nice work Mr. Dingell. The last thing we need to conquer the environmental issues we face is a bullshit carbon tax. Fix the issues, don’t tax the problems. I’m really considering turning in my Democrat card, these idiots have lost their minds.
Hey Jerks, Look Over Here
What the media should be covering versus Paris (you know, the vapid whore)…
Story of the Jena Six. While I’m positive this is not an isolated occurrence in the modern south, we’d damn well start recognizing that things need to change and that’s only going to happen through attention and pressure from outside.
Confidence In Congress At 14% - Where’s The Recall Button?
New Gallup data show confidence in Congress at all time low… what a shock. Failing a constituency that wanted troops home from Iraq and led by a worthless, corrupt, pork-barrel goddess this batch of nitwits makes depression-era legislators look like champs. This from a progressive, pro-gressive…the opposite of what’s in power today. The back-biting, over-spending, partisan bulls&*t has got to stop. Now. 86% of us think so, simple math folks, although I imagine Ms. Pelosi will need to fly home and crunch those kind numbers with her consultants.
When Is The Right Time To Leave America?
Looks like it might be time to polish up that passport and call some friends in Canada…
More Americans accept theory of creationism than evolution according to the latest Gallup polling. WHat the hell is going on? Have Fox news and other shitty media outlets pushed people so far to the cynical end of the spectrum that doubting science is a reasonable exercise? Craziness. Absolute craziness. To me saying you believe in creationism doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t believe in evolution, the two are not mutually exclusive, but these polls show that not only are people saying they believe in creationism but that they DON’T believe in evolution. Wow. Apparently science just isn’t good enough anymore.
The line forms here, no pushing, let’s just get the hell out of here.
Global Warming, Another Tax Mechanism
Denver is proposing strict new policies in an effort to fight ‘Global Warming’ in the absence of what Denver’s mayor feels is an “absence of federal leadership on the issue.”
My views on the subject are mixed, yes our current use of fossil fuels and consumption have a negative impact our our environment, we need to fix that and cleanup these issues. Are those issues directly related to climate change and aqn immenent disaster, no way. The motivation for the current “global warming’ hysteria is simple, money. It’s a new tax mechanism to offset and divert from those parties ultimately responsible for the pollution - big industry and the reality of global trade. The UN and now apprently local goverments under the recently signed U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement are looking to extort and blackmail citizens into some eco-gustapo.
Don’t get me wrong, I think behavior should change. But look at this plan. It links insurance premiums with miles driven. You have a city that has sprawled, as many have in recent decades, penalizing drivers for poor urban planning because they need to commute. Ok, that’s handy. All of this is a charade to cover and insulate those that are most culpable in all of this. Kudos for trying to effect change at the local level, but do it through incentive and reward based programs, at least until there’s a time that it’s more cost-effective to be clean and consume less.
On This Memorial Day
The Entire Government Has Failed Us on Iraq
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Wednesday 23 May 2007
For the president, and the majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party - there is only blame for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.
This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.
Few men or women elected in our history - whether executive or legislative, state or national - have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:
Get us out of Iraq.
Yet after six months of preparation and execution - half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:
The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president - if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history - who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;
The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;
The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.
You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions - Stop The War - have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.
And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult… hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harms way, are bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness - your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs - you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally - first, last and always - that the troops would not suffer.
A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,- but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe - even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.
Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.
“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”
That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?
Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War.
All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.
And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening?
See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?
Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now.
The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided… tomorrow.
The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.
Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to - for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops - denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.
For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.
Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats… have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.
Mr. Bush and his government… have failed us.
They have behaved venomously and without dignity - of course.
That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.
With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.
They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.
Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process - indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice - has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.
The electorate figured this out, six months ago.
The President and the Republicans have not - doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there - and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq…
The people have been ahead of the media….
Ahead of the government…
Ahead of the politicians…
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.
Our politics… is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war - this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others - presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party - there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.
Obama MySpace Muscle-Job
There’s an article on the Big In Japan blog about the Obama campaign working with MySpace to commandeer a fan page. Not sure about this whole setup, comes down to understanding the terms of service and really knowing where the line is. I think it’s a shame that the campaign gets Joe’s friends and content, the page should have been wiped and the name alone transferred. Giving them the fruits of his work is shameful and the Obama camp was way out of line on this.
On a tagent, I’m seeing a trend in the Obama ranks, more and more politic-y behavior and a straying from their ‘new rules for politics’ approach. I’m wondering, is it possible to have a new-breed of candidate without having a new-breed of staff? Basically if Obama is not a business-as-usual candidate does it really matter if at the end of the day his staff is all dyed-in-the-wool democratic staffers pulling the same crap stunts they always have?