George Will, Uber-Conservative, on Afghanistan

From ABC's "This Week" this morning: "It's time we get out." --George Will, Conservative, Writer, Author, Columnist

John Boehner & the Republican leadership, once again the tail wags the dog

Once more, John Boehner, his office and the Republican leadership make a deal with the Democrats in Congress, take it back to his people--the rest of the political party--and the extreme right wingers kill it: Boehner Says Two-Month Tax Cut Bill 'Just Kicking Can Down the Road' A day after the Senatevoted 89-10 to extend the payroll tax cut by two months, Republicans in the House are signaling their displeasure with the short-term fix, saying action should have been taken to resolve the issue for the whole year. It's difficult, at least, if not impossible, to work with these people. Link: http://news.yahoo.com/boehner-says-two-month-tax-cut-bill-just-202122428.html

Quote of the day

“I have a structural hypothesis here. You have a Republican ideology, which Mitt Romney obviously doesn’t believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. And there is a question here, my hypothesis is that maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can believe in. And that’s the Republican problem.” --Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning Economist, writer and columnist for The New York Times, speaking to ABC’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday on "This Week" program.

On this 9/11 Anniversary

I wrote earlier, I refuse to watch any of the coverage of this 9/11 anniversary. It depresses me for so many reasons it's nearly overwhelming. News junkie that I am, 'm going to skip them all. Besides the worst tragedy of all these attacks, what gets me most is that it was so unnecessary and so avoidable. The FBI, internally, knew Al Qaeda members were learning how to fly planes, hastily and in pretty good numbers, across the country and, worst of all, President at the time, George W. Bush had a Daily Presidential Brief back in August, warning that Osama bin Laden was trying to do this very thing. That is, that he was preparing to attack New York by plane. Finally, that same administration was still allowing small pocket knives on commercial flights across the nation. As you'll recall, that was how one group of terrorists were able to take over at least one plane, with small pocket knives. European security hadn't allowed such things for years. What it boils down to is, 9/11 shouldn't have happened, absolutely. It was totally, utterly and completely avoidable. That it did happen is shameful. Yet George W. Bush is off in Texas, fully enjoying his cushy, wealthy, fatcat life. It would be nice if Americans recognized and kept in mind his dereliction of duty and what it ended up meaning to the thousands of people who died that day, unnecessarily. Links: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030700216.html; http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=131432&page=1; http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040801215339657; http://www.slate.com/id/2097476/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US

On the 9/11 anniversary

I watched some news programs this past Sunday morning and naturally virtually all of them advertised that they'd be doing long anniversary specials on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It depresses me for so many reasons it's nearly overwhelming. News junkie that I am, that day I'm going to skip these things. Besides the worst tragedy of all these attacks, what gets me most is that it was so unnecessary and so avoidable. The FBI, internally, knew Al Qaeda members were learning how to fly planes, hastily and in pretty good numbers, across the country and, worst of all, President at the time, George W. Bush had a Daily Presidential Brief back in August, warning that Osama bin Laden was trying to do this very thing. That is, that he was preparing to attack New York by plane. Finally, that same administration was still allowing small pocket knives on commercial flights across the nation. As you'll recall, that was how one group of terrorists were able to take over at least one plane, with small pocket knives. European security hadn't allowed such things for years. What it boils down to is, 9/11 shouldn't have happened, absolutely. It was totally, utterly and completely avoidable. That it did happen is shameful. Yet George W. Bush is off in Texas, fully enjoying his cushy, wealthy, fatcat life. It would be nice if Americans recognized and kept in mind his dereliction of duty and what it ended up meaning to the thousands of people who died that day, unnecessarily. Links: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030700216.html; http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=131432&page=1; http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040801215339657; http://www.slate.com/id/2097476/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US

Notes on last Sunday's morning news shows

1)  The consensus of virtually everyone on the shows is that President Obama isn't leading strongly on this whole budget cutting mess.  It's apparently at least Washington's opinion.  I have to say, leaving it up to Congress can't be called leading, that's for sure while cutting energy assistance for the poor in his own budget seems a very real betrayal;

2)  Only 3 people on any of the programs I saw seemed to address the fact that political leaders seem to be making clear that they want to balance their books and cut their spending on the backs of the middle- and lower-classes while letting the wealthy and the crooks in the banking industry that nearly wrecked the American and world economies off the hook entirely.  Matt Taibbi and Bill Maher on "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO and Donna Brazile on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour" on ABC were those people;

3)  Our US State Department now has a Twitter account, I hear, to counter any viewpoints not truly our own, according to Sec. of State Hillary Clinton;

4)   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn't look well.

Quote of the day--man, I love these people

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator John McCain's daughter said on Sunday that Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, a Tea Party favorite, is "seen as a nut job."


Side note:  So, technically, officially, are all relatives of politicians, politicians themselves or political scholars?  I'm thinking the Cheneys first, and now the McCains.  Of course, the Kennedys may have begun the whole mess, eh?  But at least they studied history and government.


Link:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101017/pl_nm/us_usa_election_mccain

The Final lesson from Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf

Let's face facts, kids--BP won. While watching the news this morning, I saw one of their ads, showing a Black woman--from Louisiana herself, she said--doing her best job to make sure the oil slick mess would be cleaned up and all done right and well. Right then, I knew BP had won. Though they had soiled and spoiled hundreds of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf coast beaches and killed untold amounts of sea life, they are successfully painting the picture on TV and in the media that they are the "good guys" in all this and that they've "done right" and good by everyone in the Gulf and America. Forget their short-sighted money saving and carelessness that caused all this pollution and killing of wildlife, they tell that they're cleaning up the Gulf and treating everyone down there "A-okay" so, gosh, what's your problem, America? So they'll get away with this debacle. Indeed, they apparently already have. And it will happen again. Maybe by BP and maybe not but it will happen again. Americans just don't learn from history. Or facts.

Notes from a Sunday morning

--Christine O'Donnell, the Republican primary winner (though she's a Tea Party member) in Delaware looks and even sounds like Sarah Palin; --Mahmound Amahdinajad is a nearly unbelievable denier. As Christiane Amanpour was interviewing the Iranian leader this morning on ABC's "This Week", she asked him about the Iranian woman who was given the sentence of stoning for her alleged adultery and he completely denied this was the case. He denied she was given such a sentence. And because of the language/translation barrier, his denials and a natural, obvious and ever-present time limitation, Ms. Amanpour had to let the questions die, time and again. It was frustrating, as a viewer, seeing him evade--in fact, deny--the supposition of the questions and get away with it. --Know this--if the Republicans are successful in getting the George W. Bush tax cuts for the rich extended another two years--and I fear and half expect it's possible--it will fall totally in the same Republicans favor and the issue will be able to die, giving them--and the rich--a big win, with a tax loss for the rest of the country. Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

Milestones, Sunday, June 26, 2010

--We've had a huge Gulf oil spill thanks to British Petroleum now for 2 months; --19 American soldiers were killed this week, according to the Kansas City Star, in our two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; --America has been sending soldiers to Afghanistan to fight and die for them and our country, if that's your point of view, for a ten years now--a decade; --George Will thinks President Obama did something very right, it seems, by dismissing General McChrystal this week and replacing him with General David Petraeus. Will wonders never cease?; --Same for uber-conservative Monica Crowley--she had nothing but good things to say about the President's handling of the leadership situation and his decisions. Surely hell is freezing over, right?; --Ditto for, again, ultra-conservative, 81 year old John McGlaughlin--he said the President did something--this exchange of generals--right. Will wonders not cease?; --So much meaty stuff happened this week, politically, that ABC's "This Week"'s round table discussion group had too many topics and so, couldn't get to the very important, significant and rather ground-breaking financial reform work put through Congress this week. That's a big news week, for sure; --ABC's "This Week" had at least some minority representation today, which was a nice change of pace, what with George Will, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, David Sanger and Robin Wright on the "Round Table" discussion. "The McLaughlin Group", meanwhile, whas lily-white but somewhat "saved" itself by having two women on, at least. It still stuns me how bleached white and unrepresentative our national media is. They don't even try to really represent the huge, "minority" viewpoints and solutions in this country. --George Will has come to the conclusion that the Iraq war is unwinnable. That's a stunner, folks. Take note. It's a snowball that's going to become an avalanche; --Same for John McLaughlin from his long-running PBS' news show. With this and the high cost of the Afghan war, both in terms of soldiers and money and materiel, it's only a matter of time before the American public insist we get out of Afghanistan. And thank goodness. Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

Thoughts on a Sunday morning

It happened again. Thomas McClanahan and I agree on something.

Whenever that happens, I'm a little stunned. This is the 2nd time I can think it's happened.

Mr. McClanahan points out that eliminating the e-tax would be irresponsible if it's not replaced with some other tax of some kind, so the $200 million raised by this tax is done away with.

But his bigger point is that a "land tax" would make much more sense because it rewards development in the city, instead of pushing people out of the city, like the e-tax, and the property tax, which punishes and disincentivizes (I think that's a word) even the purchase of property, let alone development of it.

Good on Mr. McClanahan. This is a really eye-opening and educational column.

It would be great if a representative or better yet, some representatives in Jeff city would study this land tax option.

--Donna Brazile is terrfic.

She's most usually seen and heard, if at all, on ABC's "This Week" news program on Sunday morning.

She's smart and gives terrific, intelligent insights on American politics and society.

What's sad and unfortunate is that she's also one of very few people of color who are on the weekly sunday morning news shows. To my knowledge, she may be the only one.

--John McLaughlin (of The McLaughlin Group on PBS) is losing it, it seems.

Out of the blue this week, when they were discussing the Tiger Woods' apology this week, he asked his guests if they thought Tiger might one day run for political office.

Wth?

Seriously, John?

His guests paused at first, then laughed off the question.

Oh, and his show covered Tiger's apology before addressing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement from earlier in the week that suggested Iran is becoming a military dictatorship.

Great priorities, Mr. McLaughlin.

Not.

--The Tiger Woods apology this week is the biggest non-story of the week, at least, if not the year.

The interest in it stuns me.

Other than his family, friends, golfers and people in the golfing industry, why the interest? It seems clearly purient.

--I was watching the Sunday morning news shows, obviously, with its scroll at the bottom, given our ice/snow storm, when I was reminded of one of my favorite abbreviations.

It's COGIC or Church of God in Christ.

I've always thought that was cute, downright funny and a great counterpoint of simple, clear, unemotional and rational thinking or

LOGIC.



Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.