Category: Politics

One of the reasons why I’m blogging less about politics these days is that I feel an overwhelming sense of my own uselessness. Nothing I say is going to make BushCo actually have to pay the price for the various outrages they’ve pereptrated.

Take the torture issue, for example. It will be no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but the NY Times is runing an article today showing that, in fact, Abu Ghirab was not an isolated case of a few rogue soliders, but rather part of a broad pattern of abusive behavior that began at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and spread from there. The FBI knew what was going on, and at least some cases was none to happy about it. But they were unable to have an impact on the process.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last spring, officials characterized the abuse as the aberrant acts of a small group of low-ranking reservists, limited to a few weeks in late 2003. But thousands of pages in military reports and documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the American Civil Liberties Union in the past few months have demonstrated that the abuse involved multiple service branches in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, beginning in 2002 and continuing after Congress and the military had begun investigating Abu Ghraib.

For example:

In late 2002, more than a year before a whistle-blower slipped military investigators the graphic photographs that would set off the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, an F.B.I. agent at the American detention center in Guant

The WaPo has some actual numbers as to projected Social Security cuts. If you’re under 35, better start planning now for alternate methods of funding your retirement; you can pretty much kiss being able to live on Social Security goodbye.

Another move by BushCo that is just so wrong it’s not even funny….

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it was unwilling to set free or turn over to U.S. or foreign courts, the Washington Post said in a report that cited intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

Some detentions could potentially last a lifetime, the newspaper said.

OK, so there’s no real evidence the people in question have done something bad, or even that they were planning on doing something bad. There’s nothing that could be used in court to actually put them on trial for any actions they might have taken. But still, we should lock them up in a camp for the rest of their lives because somebody at the CIA thinks they MIGHT be a danger?

So, so wrong.

If we can’t PROVE in a court of law, or even at a tribunal of some sort, they’re a threat, we should not be holding them at all.

Speaking of taking risks in pursuit of a better career — all I can say is, bravo, Ezra. You hit the nail smack-dab on the head.

The modern job market has an overwhelming amount of risk in it. The government’s job, then, should be to eliminate what risk it can so Americans are free to make occupational decisions unfettered by fears about health care or retirement benefits. That’s why we need rock-solid Social Security protected from the fluctuations of the market. That’s why we need government-guaranteed health care that can follow you from job to job. By reducing the risk in job switching, American workers are given increased occupational freedom, which means a higher chance of finding fulfilling, worthwhile, enjoyable and important work. It enables the free market to work better because we’re removing the perverting, risk-increasing influence exerted by job-specific benefits. And Democrats are handed a coherent economic philosophy that has something to say about the modern workplace and renders our social programs natural extensions of that outlook.

QUESTION: Mr. President, on that point, there is already a lot of opposition to the idea of personal accounts, some of it fairly entrenched among the Democrats. I wonder what your strategy is to try to convince them to your view.

And specifically, they say that personal accounts would destroy Social Security. You argue they would help save the system. Can you explain how?

BUSH: If Saddam Hussein refuses to disarm, we will form a coalition of the willing and we will disarm Saddam Hussein. Next question?

Seen in the NY Times today:

State Representative Cynthia Davis of Missouri prefiled two bills for the next session of the Legislature that she said “reflect what people want.” One … would require publishers that sell biology textbooks to Missouri to include at least one chapter with alternative theories to evolution.

“These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent, and I’d be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn’t feel they were the right solutions to these problems,” Ms. Davis said.

“It’s like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn’t want to go,” she added. “I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don’t want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we’re going to take it back.”

So … people who promote evolution are terrorists? Teaching science is a place that people don’t want to go?