President Bush has a strong history of demonstrating his lack of proficiency with spoken language, but I think this takes the cake. While addressing the crowd at the Middle East Conference in Anapolis earlier this week, Bush fumbled over the names of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders who were standing RIGHT NEXT to him at the time. He didn't just mispronounce their names, he completely BUTCHERED both names. That's not just stupid, that's unbelievably incompetent. The incident occurs at 1:25 in the video below.
You may have heard about this recent story about Blackwater International, the mercenary army operating above civil or military law in Iraq. There have been some interesting developments in the past few days. First, the Blackwater agents were not protecting a principal, as first reported. Instead, in defiance of orders, after dropping off the official, the guards went to the area where the massacre took place, reportedly under a hunch that an insurgent with whom the guards had a grudge was present there. As it turns out, the Blackwater guards ended up killing 17 innocent civilians including women and children, precipitating their expulsion from Iraq. Last week, The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit against Blackwater over the incident. The suit also accuses Balckwater of knowingly allowing guards to work while taking steroids and other "judgement-altering" drugs.
The Blackwater story is especially poignant in light of the new best-selling book by Naomi Wolf, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, in which Wolf outlines, "Ten steps to fascism" which have historically occurred as nations transition to a fascist state. One of these steps is the creation of a para-military army. Another is the establishment of secret prisons. Yet another is the expansion of executive powers and erosion of traditional civil protections. Sound familiar?
As you have heard, Trent Lott, Senator from Mississippi and notable scumbag racist, announced his resignation from the senate this week. It is widely speculated that Lott is resigning now to avoid the new law that bans senators from entering the lobbying business within 2 years of resigning. It is estimated that lobbying would secure a multi-million dollar income for Lott. When asked at a news conference yesterday whether the new law had anything to do with his decision, he replied that it "didn't have a big role". I call bullshit. We'll see.
Interestingly, Lott voted against the senate ethics reform bill, which set forth the provision against lobbying by recently resigned senators, i.e., the law he is seeking to avoid now. Let it be noted that Lott is a big fan of lobbyists in general, earning a top spot on the Washington Post's list of Senators who accept the most favors from corporations. He also has a strong record of voting against legislation that would curtail the influence of lobbyists in Washington. From Barack Obama's website, "Sen. Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican who hopes to regain a Senate leadership job next year, warned against going too far in reaction to the Abramoff scandal. He singled out moves to end the practice of secretly inserting special projects into spending bills at the behest of lobbyists. While those "earmarks" have "gotten out of control," Lott said, they can be an effective way for Congress to address a problem or need back home."
Lott is one of six Republican senators, along with 17 Republicans in the House to announce their resignations recently. The lobbying reform law which takes effect on Jan. 1 may account for some of this mass exodus, which in itself says something about the motivating factors that lead many Republicans to public "service", but as described this week in the conservative vomit rag, The National Review, many Republicans fear "a coming cataclysm" of Democratic control in Washington. A recent Pew Center poll found that 50% of Americans now consider themselves Democrats, compared to 35% Republican. Self-described "independent" voters find themselves overwhelmingly leaning toward voting Democrat.
Encouraging, perhaps, but also depressing. 35% of Americans still lean Republican? How bad can those guys screw up and still retain considerable support? This is the party of Rumsfeld, Abramoff, Delay, the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, Alberto Gonzalez, torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, every snake-handling toothless racist inbred redneck troglodyte in America, and... AND, by God, George W. Bush. It is, after all, impossible to separate the man from his party. They put him in office, and they, albeit unenthusiastically, continue to support the imbecile.
1 comment:
as an independant who will be voting democrat next year, I can say that any attractiveness that the republican party held for me in the past is gone. That's really too bad, I like a lot of their principles on paper, but in reality their just too corrupt and pandering to extremists.
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