Multiple Choice

Most of the time, the options are not optimal in deciding whether or not to support a foreign government and that results in the type of predicament the U.S State Department finds itself now with the situation in Egypt. But somewhere along the line after the emergency laws invoked there following the Sadat assassination, reviews of whether to continue support should have depended upon elimination of the emergency contingency. To let this exist for three decades and not anticipate what has eventually evolved, doesn't compute. What is the job of State if not to have thinkers that can foresee such possibility and what to do to prevent same.

Too often the U.S finds itself stuck with a choice that should have had more points of review and added conditions that should have been met for aid to continue.

How many more Saddam Husseins and Hosni Mubaraks are on the horizon?



graysmoke

Only in America

Where else could a former teen-age car-jacking delinquent become chair of a Congressional oversight committee that rules on investigations of other members that HE gets to subpoena? And he is insisting on being the supreme and final decider about it instead of following the historical practice of that power being subject to support by the ranking member.

Mr. Issa your lack of integrity would give anyone pause.

Put that one in Ripley's.


graysmoke

EXODUS

So Lieberman is leaving..........wow, no more mole activity in the democratic caucus. But will someone please see that he takes the Homeland Security Department with him on his way out?

We don't need that monster of a bureaucracy and is a good place to implement budget restraint.


graysmoke

DEBATE? N-O-T

Today the House reconvenes and all the media report that the agenda is a "debate" on the health reform bill.

Well that is the most debatable label one could think of. And the House majority are acting in a purely political cynical manner, wasting Congressional time (and taxpayer money for their salaries) by using time exercising spin of a matter that they all know has not a smidgen of a chance to accomplish what they purport to be doing, the Senate won't act on it and for sure, the President would veto any repeal so here we are drowning in the same old tactics. Attack - attack - attack just for the political crop of votes in the next election, nothing else and I resent this.


Why couldn't they be instead, adding a feature requiring an evaluation of mental and emotional stability for college or higher education admissions. This is warranted given the time development history of major brain diseases becoming progressively worse when untreated in that age cohort. Maybe this would prevent further Tucson horrors. And in the past it has been a requirement for children entering grade school to have certain vaccinations etc., and even in some cases, a physical.

But instead we are mired in the spin ---- political campaigning in the House Chamber and calling it the people's business.

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

graysmoke

A MATTER OF WORDS

True to form, Silly Sarah from Wasilla, engages in incendiary phrasing in her response to criticisms derived from the Tucson Tragedy. She uses a phrase "BLOOD LIBEL"-- look soon for her to deny that she knows what the historical connotations attached to those two words, means.

I wonder who wrote the text of what she delivered on the video. Maybe I can find out eventually. But meanwhile expect more denial --- responsibility is not a character trait of hers or many others in her party.......didn't she walk out on her Alaskan responsibilities as governor? Now she wants to walk away from her pattern of verbal conduct that is one of the major contributions to the nasty political weather that has settled in on opposition discourse. Don't expect any clearing of the atmosphere. But hold on to hope that she will fade from the scene after 2012.


graysmoke

Reaping the Whirlwind

Again in this country we are experiencing an unbelievably tragic situation in the political arena.

I come at my views on the events developed after being a resident of Arizona from January 1987 until August 2009. And after having lived the previous 28 years in Oregon and a dozen years prior to that, in Los Angeles.

Arizona by nature has an element of frontier mentality that many there, flaunt. This is confirmed by the insistence on taking matters into ones own hands if one is displeased at official efforts regarding public issues. A huge indicator of this is the prevalence of weapons and the right to concealed carry, making it dangerous to be a driver - risking some armed citizen to misinterpret an innocent hand movement and resulting in one of the many road rage incidents reported over the last several years.

It is encouraging to hear Sheriff Clarence Dubnik be so candid about the state of politics now poisoning public life there.


While a resident, I felt like, socially and politically, I was living in a time warp. Many issues that had previously been resolved in my prior state residencies were just coming into the landscape of the legislature and the county organizations.

I was moderately active there in politics. at the time being a registered Democrat. I attended monthly meetings of the Democratic club in the adult community where I resided, a gated enclave of about five thousand residents during the winter months (the majority of them from small midwestern republican environments) and an increasing number of year round residents. The club frequently had candidates involved in local elections as guest speakers as well as current office holders and a number of times I also attended the precinct general meetings so had quite a bit of exposure to local views. During the presidential race for Bush's second term, I worked as community organizer for the Kerry campaign. For the first time in the states history, the East Valley area had an office for a major Democrat candidate. Of course we were fighting an uphill battle given the history of the strength of the Republican dominance in the state. And certainly some of that influence is maintained by the large segment of the population that are Mormon. But the current atmosphere does not originate predominately locally, rather I see it as fueled by the 24/7 media blitz and the historical movement of the republican party to the far right and one only needs to acknowledge how much misinformation is injected into the gullible listeners by the constant reiteration of planned rhetoric that is based on building emotional reactions rather than thoughtful discourse done at a conversational level rather than the yelling matches and the incendiary deliverance ad nauseum of vitriolic rhetoric.

Will this change? I have my doubts.

graysmoke

Painful to See

As a long term C-Span junkie I am overdosing-- I have watched hours and hours of the first sessions (oops) of the House of Representatives with the R's spinning their frame rhetoric and acquiring what should be a red face over the failure of two representatives to comply with the Constitutional stipulations that require the oath of office to be taken on the floor of the chamber and not while attending a fundraiser in another section of the Capitol. Laughfable after the grandstanding reading of the document shortly before. A big foot- in- mouth mental cartoon makes me smile.

Let's see how many Luntz-sounding phrases have been repeated so often in these sessions that one is already sick of them. For instance tabbing the health care reform act as a "Job Killer"--which there is no factual basis.

Then there is the constant uttering of "Obama health care plan" This carrys nasty pejorative meanings........and is aimed at the 2012 presidential candidacy expected by the present office holder.

Even more than repealing the affordable health care reform act, the goal is to prevent President Obama from achieving a second term, which they must greatly fear - given how much effort they have directed toward smearing every accomplishment with such adjectives as socialist, marxist, etc, which to those that listen to the cable propaganda station named in the University of Maryland study as producing voters that are dangerously misinformed and leads one to conclude they have no idea of what those labels would actually mean and they don't have the curiosity necessary to do any fact checking or to learn exactly what such terms mean.

So between now and the elections coming on 2012 -- expect to see and hear more along these lines. R's have practiced these tactics for so long they come as second nature now to them. Rarely do we see an independent thinker offer new ideas backed by factual research and a balanced view of the results of their behaviors.

graysmoke

The Race Backwards

Experts at backpedalling and running in reverse are being sworn in tomorrow so back to the Dark Ages -- I will be watching to see if the results can be diverted successfully by the Democrats. At best the federal government is going to be held to a standstill and that will be very negative in this climate of crisis ( which the incoming crew's predecessors initiated during the Bush behaviors).

Boehner the Beast, and McConnell the Monster are ready to destroy the country if it means they can again claim the power to avoid governing in the interests of the populace and instead only in the interests of the corporations that provide the wherewithal for there campaign coffins.

graysmoke