I was tempted to categorize this as humor, but Brother Jeb sure doesn't see it that way. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Jeb is all het up that Common Cause won't come clean. It disclosed "only" its top contributors to the $2.6 million Florida ballot campaign it has waged to have redistricting taken out of the hands of the Republican Legislature: the 44 largest contributors who gave $5,000 or more.
Bush's response: "I appreciate they gave up some of their donors. But what about the rest? Where's the outrage?"
While reading a discussion on national health care, I started thinking about how important it is for people to have common reference points when we speak. In language, the most basic reference points are the very definitions of the words we use. It's crucial that we share definitions for any meaningful communication to occur. And, conversely, employing a different definition than the one your listener employs makes it very easy to deceive the listener as to your intentions.
Which brings me to the political discourse in America, where I think some folks on the right are using the definitional game to their advantage and to the detriment of real discussion and communication.
For a man with pretensions to presidential power, some serious education, and presumably lots of experience in dealing with the public in his role as a surgeon, Senate leader Bill Frist comes across as surprisingly doctrinaire and partisan.
Witness his performance on today's Face the Nation program. I find this odd. Very odd. But not surprising given the general level of arrogance that my country has exhibited since being placed under the thumb of George W. Bush.
The U.S. Treasury Department has reportedly set off a potential international incident (of the admittedly mild variety) by prodding an American-owned hotel in Mexico to evict the Cuban delegation to an energy conference in Mexico City. Lots of right wingers love to console themselves with the myth that opposition to the absurdly misguided policies of the Bush Administration are based on nothing more than some visceral "Bush hating." How they manage to convince themselves that hate could spring out of nothing is beyond me, but then much of what they claim to think is beyond me.
One of the most dedicated advocates of "they just hate Bush" is the Weekly Standard, that exercise in neocon smugness run by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, with lots of contributions from PJ O'Rourke, that "humorist" who suffers from fear of altruism. One secondary headline over there in 2004 actually read "Amateur and professional Bush-haters gather in Washington for the Take Back America conference.".
Pamela Leavey, at Democratic Daily takes a good look at the approval of the corporate takeover that results in port security at several American ports being run by a company, DP World, from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Check out the comments, too, for several flurries of accusations of racism and bigotry on the part of people who might object to the deal.
Now that Patrick Fitzgerald has let it be known that Libby claims his superiors authorized him to leak classified info, several folks over there on the right (way over there) have been floating the idea that Cheney has authority to unilaterally and instantly declassify information. The implication is that Cheney could hand out whatever classified info he wanted to, because as soon as he hands it out, its declassified.
A piece over at The Washington Note got me thinking about that claim, so I took a read through the Executive order which Bushites cite as giving Cheney automatic authority to unilaterally declassify info, Executive Order 13292, from March 25, 2003
According to a Survey USA poll Bush's approval ratings are now below 50% in 21 of the 31 states that he carried in the 2004 election, and opinion was a dead even 49 to 49 in another. And all 19 of the states that went for Kerry had a majority disapproving of Bush. "In its Financial Risk Outlook 2006 survey, the regulator warns that a growing minority of consumers are risking financial ruin as a result of their burgeoning personal debts."
America? Nope. The UK, according to Monsters & Critics in a late January news piece which includes the statement that, "The UK's leading financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has warned that spiralling levels of consumer debt could destabilise the UK economy." As reported by the Washington Post, Bush administration stonewalling and Republican senators' bootlicking/ass-covering may have put the kabosh on a thorough investigation into the administration's warrantless and thus illegal domestic spying program. As politics, this may turn out to be a success for the GOP. As governance, it's an unambiguous disaster for the republic. |
