Sunday, August 27, 2006
The Bush Presidency - Days left: 876
Same old, same old
Eleanor Clift wrote in Newsweek about the Fear Factor and President Bush. Nothing new; others have remarked about the subject, that the president and offcials in his administration thrive on ramping up threat of terrorism at every opportunity. There are times when opportunities are created and the threats exaggerated. Ever since 9/11 terrorists have become their life rope, and they show no sign of giving it up. They cannot survive without it.
With 876 days to go before this president leaves the White House we are stuck. We cannot stop him from continuing with his lies but we don't have to believe him. The failures -- from the war in Iraq to reconstruction of the area ravaged by Katrina -- of his administration can no longer be in hidden. More and more people are tuning him off. That is how it should be.
Elenaor Clift - Newsweek Bush’s original sin was to politicize U.S. intervention in Iraq. He used the war to transform an aimless presidency into one of Churchillian dimensions, and now that it’s all turned sour, he has nothing to fall back on. Bush is as beleaguered now as Lyndon Johnson was during Vietnam—with one key difference. The worse the news is from Iraq, the more positive Bush is that he’s right. As Vietnam raged on, Johnson became less certain he was doing the right thing. Victory no longer appears possible in Iraq, yet Bush’s rhetoric is more bullish than ever about the correctness of his course. U.S. forces are not leaving Iraq as long as he’s president. His model is Prime Minister Winston Churchill, defeated by an ungrateful British public after leading the country through war, a lonely figure vindicated by history. To achieve stability in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post and author of “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” (Penguin 2006), says U.S. forces can expect to stay for 10 to 15 years, on top of the three they’ve already been there. “And that’s the optimistic scenario,” he says. |
A Republican Bigot Speaks Out in Florida
Remember Kathleen Harris and her role in the 2000 presidential election ? At that time she was Florida's Secretary of State. She won a seat in Congress in 2002 and is currently the Republican contender for U.S. Senate. This is what the Post reported "ORLANDO, Aug. 25 -- Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics."
"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris told interviewers from the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention. She cited abortion and same-sex marriage as examples of that sin. Harris, a candidate in the Sept. 5 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, said her religious beliefs "animate" everything she does, including her votes in Congress. |
