To the editor:
With midterm elections looming, the far-right of the Republican Party are as jittery as Rush Limbaugh waiting for his cleaning lady to show up with the OxyContin.
Even with talking points like Iraq's growing civil war; the regrouping of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the boiling "nuke-ya-lur" tea kettles of Iran and North Korea; the near-critical labor shortage in California's agricultural industry in the absence of a competent immigration policy; the billions of dollars lost to fraud, mismanagement and no-bid contacts for Iraq and Katrina; the rotting city that was New Orleans; the plague of influence peddling at the White House and in Congress; and the recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate stating that the United States is actually less safe after our Iraq invasion, dead-enders like columnist Cal Thomas instead choose to dust off the Lewinsky scandal.
Sadly, for right-wing zealots like Cal, some missions will never be accomplished.
Steve Wilson,
Lawrence
Comments
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Kookamooka (MJ Browne) says…
love it!! You are right on the money! How I long for the days of stained blue dresses. Life was good back then! Why can't Bush just stop fiddling in world politics and chase a skirt for a change!
bisky1 (anonymous) says…
gosh steve sounds like you hit 'em all 'cept for maybe halliburton, maybe you could get that one next time. what's your plan?
Porter (anonymous) says…
Great letter!
Tychoman (anonymous) says…
Awesome letter.
Agnostick (anonymous) says…
right-thinker: How is what you just wrote about GWB any different than when people like you try to pin 9/11 on Clinton?
Serious question, hoping for a serious answer.
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
P.S. Bush isn't responsible for a hurricane; he's responsible for the poor manner in which the federal government responded to the disaster. Level-headed Centrists like myself, and any other non-extremists, are smart enough to know the difference. We won't be fooled by the RPM. :)
Agnostick (anonymous) says…
If news organizations were able to get into the NOLA Convention Center, the Super Dome... why not FEMA?
As pointed out in "When the Levees Broke," there was exactly one federal agency that busted their butts helping people during the Katrina fiasco: The U.S. Coast Guard. Had FEMA been operating under the Coast Guard, people would've gotten help a lot sooner. I'm not talking about rebuilding, I'm not talking about evacuations... I'm talking about, "Here's some food and some water to tide you over the next couple of days, until we can help you get out." USCG chopper pilots put in double-overtime lifting people up & out in those little baskets, and hardly got recognized. "Brownie" didn't to anything--it was the USCG that was doing "a heck of a job."
I don't spin anything when it's bad news, and I don't think moderate Dems & moderate Republicans do, either. It's the extremist Dems & the extremist Republicans like yourself that totally lose perspective.
I know the difference... ;)
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
miker (anonymous) says…
Very well said !
Concise & to the point(s).
weeslicket (anonymous) says…
"...Willary and his band of thugs..."
"...a racist black mayor and a loser governor and a large population of crackheads in a very stinky, corrupt city ..."
that's quite a lot of namecalling for the sabbath, don't you think?
Agnostick (anonymous) says…
Pilgrim, it's not "their" superiority complex... it's **YOURS**. It's Contremists like yourself (and this applies especially to the Bible-thumpers) that see yourselves as "superior" these days. Who, after all, is quickest to attack those who don't agree with the current administration? Who rushes to label these folks as "un-American?" "Un-patriotic?" Neo-McCarthyism, anyone?
It's largely due to the old, tired ideas that Contremists (that's "conservative extremists," by the way) cling to--ideas like:
1) freedom... but only for those that offer blind allegiance to the current power structure.
2) prosperity... but only for those that can afford it
3) liberty... but only for those that keep their mouths shut, no matter what our government is doing
4) justice... but only for those that unfailingly subscribe to my (or "our") belief system
To paraphrase ol' "Pee Wee Herman,"... All the Contremists I know have big "Buts."
I was somewhat surprised a couple of days ago, when I happened to flip the TV channel over to HBO and see the current documentary they're running about Barry Goldwater. What surprised me was how much I *agreed* with the man. Goldwater, a conservative (perhaps the best example of "real" conservativism) running in the 1964 presidential election, on the Republican ticket, actually believed that...
1) Abortion is the choice of the WOMAN
2) "Religion" hastened the death of a political party
3) Government shouldn't encroach on personal privacy
Of course, I don't agree with *all * of his beliefs. Goldwater was against the Civil Rights Act, and I think the time was right for the passage of that act in 1964.
My point though, is that what passes for "conservatism" in 2006, seems anything... "but."
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com