Category: World at Large

The Republican Pastime.

I knew there was a good reason I didn’t like baseball. Apparently the Hall of Fame has cancelled a Bull Durham retrospective because (gasp!) Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are against the war. (The Hall of Fame only allows in all-American racists, drunks, and wifebeaters, not peaceniks.) Tim Robbins wrote a nice reply: “Your subservience to your friends in the administration is embarrassing to baseball and by engaging in this enterprise you show that you belong with other cowards and ideologues in a hall of infamy and shame…Long live democracy, free speech and the ’69 Mets; all improbable, glorious miracles that I have always believed in.” You go, Tim. As Spike Lee pointed out in the first five minutes of He Got Game, basketball is the true American pastime nowadays anyway.

By George, he’s right.

“During his presidential campaign Bush cried, ‘I’m a uniter, not a divider.’ As one critic put it, ‘He’s got that right. He’s united the entire world against him.'” George McGovern goes house on Dubya, and it’s definitely worth a gander. (Via Looka.) And, if Dubya approaches his religion with anything more than born-again zeal, perhaps he’ll take a moment’s reflection on this: “We will, of course, win the war with Iraq. But what of the question raised in the Bible that both George Bush and I read: ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul,’ or the soul of his nation?“

Mmmm, bacon.

Yum. Both the Dubya administration and the Senate bloat up the war bill with pork barrel spending. As John McCain put it, “I didn’t realize that Al Qaeda had reached all the way to the South Pole.” Speaking of wartime handouts, Dems Henry Waxman and John Dingell want further scrutiny into contracts given to Halliburton subsidiaries by the GAO. All I know is, if the Clinton administration were involved in this type of quid pro quo, Dan Burton would have had an investigation up and running weeks ago.

No Representation with Taxation.

While still desperately in denial about the nation’s exploding debt, the GOP has, as expected, gone to war against its own moderate wing and threatened to sink the budget, in the hopes of preserving Dubya’s $726 billion tax giveaway. This is despite the fact that the Daschle Dems have in essence already capitulated again, agreeing to pass an equally wrong-headed compromise plan half that size. Sigh…the Dems really have to get it together. At any rate, hopefully moderate Republicans will take DeLay’s budget blackmail for the desperate, dangerous gamble it is and call him on it. Nothing screams GOP these days quite like a government shutdown.

Running the Table.

Although Saddam’s regime appears to be on its last legs, the Bushies have not yet begun to fight. In fact, this administration now seems recommitted to the task of destroying whatever remaining credibility America has left in the Middle East and the international community. For, despite recent setbacks in Afghanistan, Rummy, Wolfowitz, and the rest of Dubya’s neocon hawks now turn to Syria as the best candidate for our next splendid little war, a war that even England is loath to enter. And one has to assume Iran, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk are next. (Then maybe the Bushies will be content to take a card.)

Over Here.

To the vast credit of our armed forces, the Iraq war now seems to be going as well as it possibly can. (As I’ve said several times before, I fear the Iraqi peace will be somewhat tougher.) But the Bushies aren’t in the clear yet. For, despite all the work Karl Rove’s doing to paint Dubya as Eisenhower for the reelection campaign, it’s still the economy, stupid. And despite our military successes outside Baghdad, the deficit is soaring, the GOP is repudiating their own budget, and the economy is now clearly poised for the Dubya-dip. Like father, like son?

Rallying the Troops.

“The Republicans have tried to make a practice of attacking anybody who speaks out strongly by questioning their patriotism. I refuse to have my patriotism or right to speak out questioned. I fought for and earned the right to express my views in this country.” John Kerry presses the attack against the gaggle of GOP flaks (with no military experience) casting anti-American aspersions his way, and as a result is now screaming back up the Murphometer. Unlike Daschle, Kerry seems to have learned not to back down after stating the obvious. Let’s hope it’s the start of a trend among Democratic Presidential candidates. Update: Salon posts the text of Kerry’s speech: “I don’t need any lessons in patriotism from the likes of Tom DeLay.” Fellow Dems, this is cause for hope.

Unconscientious Objectors.

On the question of war, it seems that, Dennis Kucinich notwithstanding, the Dems have basically decided to lay low for the time being. It’s the Iraq vote all over again…when is our party going to get its act together? Be they pro-war or anti-war, Democratic reps should be actively involved in the public debate on Iraq, not running scared from the underhanded smears of the administration. Get in the game, people. Update: Perhaps this is the beginning. At a Q & A today, John Kerry argued that the world will only trust a new president after the experience of this war. Y’know, I think he’s on to something.