February 29, 2008

Due to the changes noted yesterday [see below] I'm finally getting around to posting this fascinating piece by that Bastion of the Right, George Will.
The Road To a GOP Minority By George F. Will --
Sunday, February 10, 2008


LEE COUNTY, Fla. -- Coconut Road near Fort Myers looks like any other concrete ribbon near housing developments, golf courses and shopping malls in this state's booming southwest. But like another fragrant slab of recent pork, the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, Coconut Road leads to somewhere darkly fascinating. It runs straight into Washington's earmark culture of waste, corruption and anti-constitutional deviousness.
^^^
In his State of the Union address, President Bush vowed to veto any appropriation bill "that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half." [Sen] Coburn [R-OK] tartly notes that although Congress hardly needs 5,500 earmarks -- half of last year's total -- the president's goal would be met if Republicans themselves quit earmarking. That fact goes far to explain the Republicans' current and future minority status.
Click here for the complete text.
xxx
On occasion, when he's not blindly following the party line, George Will even gets it partly right.

Of course, that's not the whole story.
For instance, he left out the part about condoning torture.
And we mustn't forget the wars. Or the fact that we will ask them to die for a lie but abandon the soldiers who come home maimed in body and soul and need our help. Let heaven help them. We won't.
And then there's the environment. Remember it?
And our pathetic educational and health care systems.
And sending jobs overseas in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
And the part about dirty tricks in order to get elected at any cost. Does anyone study ancient history these days? Remember the redistricting of Texas? And the more recent attempt to change the rules in California?
And changing the rules of Congress -- then crying foul when the Dems took over and imposed the SAME rules on the repugs for just the first 100 days of the new order.
And justice. As opposed to condemning Siegelman to prison for being a successful Democrat. And then, when that debacle finally comes to light, leaning on CBS to kill the story then censoring it in Alabama and Tennessee.

So, George, you were right--as far as you went. You just didn't go nearly far enough. Or do you label all those matters as needless earmarks?

6 comments:

two crows said...

hi dguzman--
I don't hate it --
as to why I'm disappointed in America--
well, that list sums up a lot of the reason.
even then, I only outlined some _recent_ history.
going back to before the nation _was_ a nation -- there's such a long and shameful list.

jmsjoin said...

Hi two crows
Missed a couple of days. ! I guess he forgot to mention the bridge to nowhere was a Republican Senators.

jmsjoin said...

Keep smiling two crows! you love America. You hate what it has come to under Bush!

LET'S TALK said...

This country and the government that we are set up with is so corrupted and it seems that periodically even the hardest nose conservatives get a little of what they are doing illegally.

George Will is not my favorite person in the world and I do not read most of what he has to say, but I must admit that he came to a road and had to question the corrupted government that is ran from the top stating with Bush.

two crows said...

hey, AAP--
I was disappointed in it even before Bush. at least it had SEEMED to get better for a while -- now it has fallen into the abyss.

but, when it practiced religious intolerance back in the 1500's; when it practiced genocide against the natives; when it imported people and treated them as property; when big business ignored the plight of the workers and broke the unions; when the gov't deliberately infected black men with syphilis and studied them as the disease slowly killed them [this was before the Nazis did the same thing and we condemned them for it]; when we went into Vietnam in another illegal war; etc. etc. etc. [and I'm just scratching the surface] -- the US has very little to be proud of over a long and sordid history.

and we call ourselves the 'shining city on the hill'. oh please. . . .

two crows said...

hey, Larry--
yeah-- lately, George Will has seemed to wake up and smell the coffee -- at least once in a while.

I watch him on George Stephanopolus almost every week and he has been condemning Bush/CheneyCo for at least 2 years now.
I've been pretty amazed, actually. in fact, that's why I've started reading his column more often lately.

no doubt he'll go back to spouting the party line after Nov. in fact, he can still do that even now.
you should've seen him roasting the poor people who lost their homes a few months ago. talk about blaming the victims!