Posted by Len on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 9:37 pm CT in Humor, Politics
There are times when the wingnuttery will flaunt their cluelessness (cluenesstrosity?) for the whole world to see. With their attacks on Al Gore, they are definitely flaunting this week. (Margolis is not the only nut lapping at this trough; he just happens to be the example most handy at the moment.)
WASHINGTON (AP) – In a diplomatic turnabout, the Bush administration will join an Iraq-sponsored “neighbors meeting” with Iran and Syria, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday.
It marked a change of approach by the United States, which has resisted calls by members of Congress and by a bipartisan Iraq review group to include Iran and Syria in talks designed to stabilize Iraq.
The move came amid growing discontent over the war, even as President Bush rushes an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq and congressional Democrats struggle to settle on their next steps to end U.S. participation.
The administration said its decision to take part in the Iraq conference did not represent a change of heart, although the White House has accused both Iran and Syria of deadly meddling in the war. “We’ve always been inclined to participate in an Iraqi-led conference,” White House counselor Dan Bartlett said.
BLUFFTON, S.C. (AP) – Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday the war in Iraq has been mismanaged for years and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be remembered as one of the worst in history.
“We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement – that’s the kindest word I can give you – of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war,” the Arizona senator told an overflow crowd of more than 800 at a retirement community near Hilton Head Island, S.C. “The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously.”
McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained that Rumsfeld never put enough troops on the ground to succeed in Iraq.
“I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,” McCain said to applause.
The comments were in sharp contrast to McCain’s statement when Rumsfeld resigned in November, and failed to address the reality that President Bush is the commander in chief.
Emphasis mine. Rummy was only doing what he was told to do. He was by no means a good Sec of Def, but it is not fair to make him the scapegoat for the entire Bush administration.
Posted by Len on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 5:11 pm CT in General, Weblogging
It actually hurts to type, which is why I have not been doing much of it. The surgery has finally been scheduled for tomorrow morning. So hopefully I’ll be back soon.
Posted by Len on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 8:31 pm CT in Politics
If there is one thing this country does not need, it is another president who refuses to own up to his or her mistakes. We do not need another George W. Bush!
One of the most important decisions that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made about her bid for the presidency came late last year when she ended a debate in her camp over whether she should repudiate her 2002 vote authorizing military action in Iraq.
Several advisers, friends and donors said in interviews that they had urged her to call her vote a mistake in order to appease antiwar Democrats, who play a critical role in the nominating process. Yet Mrs. Clinton herself, backed by another faction, never wanted to apologize — even if she viewed the war as a mistake — arguing that an apology would be a gimmick.
In the end, she settled on language that was similar to Senator John Kerry’s when he was the Democratic nominee in 2004: that if she had known in 2002 what she knows now about Iraqi weaponry, she would never have voted for the Senate resolution authorizing force.
Yet antiwar anger has festered, and yesterday morning Mrs. Clinton rolled out a new response to those demanding contrition: She said she was willing to lose support from voters rather than make an apology she did not believe in.
“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,†Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.
Anyone who is not capable of seeing what a huge mistake the invasion of Iraq was is not qualified to lead this country.
WASHINGTON — The Senate gridlocked on the Iraq war in a sharply worded showdown on Saturday as Republicans foiled a Democratic attempt to rebuke President Bush over his deployment of 21,500 additional combat troops.
The vote was 56-34. That was four short of the 60 needed to advance the measure, which is identical to a nonbinding resolution that Democrats pushed through the House on Friday.
Posted by Len on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 6:58 pm CT in Election 2008, Politics
Though I am no longer a practitioner, I was raised in the Mormon faith. Mitt Romney, it is beginning to appear, is also no longer a practitioner. He is fast becoming a right wing conservative who will do or say whatever he thinks he needs to do or say in order to get elected…
ABC News’ Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candididate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.
That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary. He told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on “This Week,” that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
“In Massachusetts, if you register as an independent, you can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary,” said Romney, who until he made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 1994 had spent his adult life as a registered independent. “When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I’d vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”
But 12 years ago, the Boston Globe reported that Romney was giving a different explanation for his vote for Tsongas.
“Romney confirmed he voted for former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the state’s 1992 Democratic presidential primary, saying he did so both because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and because he favored his ideas over those of Bill Clinton,” the Boston Globe’s Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips wrote on Feb. 3, 1994. “He added he had been sure the G.O.P. would renominate George Bush, for whom he voted in the fall election.”
