General: October 2005 Archives

Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Bill Kristol, Laura Ingraham and their conservative colleagues didn’t sink the Harriet Miers nomination on their own. But in the blink of a news cycle, they turned against their president, framed the debate and provided the passion that undermined her case.

It was Krauthammer who offered the White House last Friday what he called “the perfectly honorable way to solve the conundrum” by using a refusal to turn over Miers’s internal memos as a fig leaf for withdrawing her Supreme Court bid -- which is precisely what she did.

“I guess she reads my column,” the Washington Post and Fox News commentator said yesterday. “All that was missing was the footnote.”

This time, no one can blame the liberal media. And what made the right’s revolt all the more remarkable was that its opinion-mongering wing didn’t simply stand in polite opposition to Miers. Its troops hit the trenches, attacked Miers as unqualified, ripped President Bush for cronyism and in some cases raised money to defeat the nomination. (source)

I suppose that the title to this entry could also be, “What It’s Like for Our Country to Be Owned by the Radical Right". I’m all for being fair and equitable. I can understand that the Right have different view from me. I am, after all, a social liberal. I don’t believe that the government has a right to tell me how to live my life as long as I do not break any laws. I don’t believe that it is the government’s role to tell me who and who I cannot marry. I am a fiscal conservative. I don’t believe we should be initiating programs that we can’t pay for right now - today. We look back on the Katrina disaster and many wonder, “What went wrong?” I’ll tell you what went wrong. Iraq went wrong. We were lied to and we went to war based on lies. The President went wrong. He should be facing impeachment. But until that happens and until Americans get their fill of the vile hypocrisy, lies and deceit, and playing one group of citizens off against another group of citizens, this will continue to go on.

In the end, America loses. It should be abundantly clear by now that the religious right are at the helm and are running this country. They are calling the shots because they basically own the President. The pull they had in killing the Harriet Miers nomination should be proof of that.

But the real question is, what’s next?

If Proposition 2 passes, opponents say it would make Texas less competitive in hiring and recruiting.

Mary Mason, chairwoman of Missing Lynx Systems Inc., says the San Ramon, Calif.-based software company aborted its plans to move to Ohio after that state passed an amendment banning gay marriage.

It was the last straw for about half the company’s 20 employees, who already were wavering on moving for other reasons, including cold weather.

Mason says Missing Lynx still plans to expand in a new city, and Austin is one of the contenders. But Mason says a marriage amendment would discourage the company from looking more closely at Texas.

Tech businesses “are all being courted by Galveston and Austin, who are looking to bring in high tech development,” Mason says. “They are talking nice, but I can’t get the people I need to move there.”

“Part of what I’ve found is that people who can think creatively and can do this kind of work need a tolerant environment. Texas will wind up looking un-American, intolerant and very foolish.” (source)

President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden’s stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians. (source)

Great. God talks to our President. Yeah, that give me a warm fuzzy feeling deep inside. Hopefully, God won’t tell GWB to launch the nukes.

On Sunday the military acknowledged that it has missed its enlistment target by the largest margin since 1979. Monday the secretary of the Army announced that effective immediately the military is lowering its recruitment standards.

Francis J. Harvey announced said the military now will accept recruits who score near the bottom of military aptitude tests.

It seems strange, to say the least, that our military would think the American people are safer with drug offenders and academic under-achievers on duty than with qualified gays and lesbians reporting for duty. - Steve Ralls, a spokesperson for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

Source

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- U.S. politicians and policymakers’ perceptions towards the Iraq war have reached another tipping point: There is now a widespread recognition shared among senior uniformed U.S. military officers and Washington foreign policy analysts that plans to rapidly build up the Iraqi army as a new, independent effective fighting force have failed disastrously.

The Senate heard testimony last week from some of America’s top generals that the war in Iraq is going worse than ever and that only 1 out of 119 Iraqi army and security battalions can operate by itself in combat situations without U.S. military backup.

Top U.S. generals admitted in testimony Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee that only a single Iraqi battalion was prepared to operate on its own without U.S. military support. This was a stunning decrease from the three battalions that U.S. generals had assured Congress in previous testimony were ready to operate independently. The Iraqi army consists of 119 battalions. But the generals’ testimony meant that after two and a half years of U.S. efforts, only 750 men out of 200,000 can be relied upon to operate and obey orders independently in combat situations. Highlighting, my own. (source)

So, what do we do now?