Category: Politics

I’m a left-wing freak show?

I wrote about this issue yesterday and here I am back at it again today – a post over at Blog For America set me off. According to The Club For Growth, people who support Howard Dean are part of a vast

latte-drinking,
sushi-eating,
Volvo-driving,
New York Times-reading,
body-piercing,
Hollywood-loving,
left-wing freak show

The Burnt Orange Report posted a nifty comeback. An excerpt:

Even when you work this out on a per-capita basis, there is one Starbucks location in Vermont for every 307,000 Vermonters, versus one Texas location for every 53,987 Texans. In other words, there are over five times as many Starbucks locations on a per-person basis in Texas than there are in Vermont.

Since the market would never lie to us, we can safely assume who the real latte-sippers are.

Although this sort of tit-for-tat admittedly brings a smile to my lips, the underlying issue is a serious one. It all gets back to that great cultural divide in America these days, and it worries me. We have become a nation of “Us” and “Them” and we seem to continually strive for more ways of dividing ourselves.

I am really, really tired of it. Sleazy, divisive, insulting, underhanded politics seems to be the name of the game these days – and not just in Republican circles – and I’ve had enough. I want my country back.

I hope from the bottom of my heart that Howard Dean is as good as we supporters believe him to be, because I don’t think I could stand another letdown. If he turns out to be yet another slimy politician who’s brillantly, yet cynically, manupulated himself into his current front-runner status, I’m going to give it up and look hard at moving to someplace nice and quiet like Tonga.

The Veil Descends

Found a long, highly informative article in US News & World Report today about the level of secrecy in the Bush administration. Yet more reasons to be disgusted by what this administration has done to our country. It’s quite long but worth a read.

As far as personal veils of secrecy go, I haven’t heard back from Allstate yet about my car, so I’m still in limbo. I just hope it’s all done with soon so I can get out of that dirty, smelly loaner car.

Someone else who rocks

Way to go George Soros, for 1) proving that not everyone who is immensely wealthy is a Republican and 2) being willing to put his money where his mouth is.

Notable quotes from the Washington Post article:

“America, under Bush, is a danger to the world,” Soros said.

and

Soros believes that a “supremacist ideology” guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans.” It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (“The enemy is listening”). “My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me,” he said in a soft Hungarian accent.

Not surprisingly, the Republicans have now accused Soros of buying the Democratic Party. Even if that were true, I’d rather have George Soros calling the shots than a bunch of Texas oil barons.

I Don't Like Donald Rumsfeld

While listening to ABC’s “This Week” this morning on my way to work, I started to hear echoes of Robert McNamara in Donald Rumsfeld. Look at what he said today: “It’s clearly a tragic day for America,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. “In a long, hard war, we’re going to have tragic days. But they’re necessary.” (source). Maureen Dowd wrote a great column on this very subject a few days ago. Her best line, and one oh so apt for Rumsfeld’s quote today: ‘In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”‘

In the early days of the war on Iraq, my husband and I discussed whether we weren’t getting into another Vietnam. As time passes and the shadow war continues, I grow more sure that President Bush and his crew have not learned the lessons of history and have committing our troops to another multi-year battle against an enemy we cannot defeat in a land we do not understand.

I feel both sad and angry that who knows how many of our men and women will have to pay the ultimate price until this mess gets straightened out. I just hope our next president will be able get us out of there quickly and with some faint shreds of our honor intact.

Thomas Friedman is a really smart guy sometimes

Taken from his NY Times column today:

It’s time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq’s Army – which didn’t even fight us – and declare: “We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we’re inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis.”

I think it’s a very interesting idea. Of course, if we were to do it, depending on the sympathies of the soldiers who re-up, the door is open for a religious takeover of Iraq. That isn’t what our soldiers died for. But better ideas are few and far between right now.