May 19, 2006

Ah yes, there’s the President out there facing-the-nation on TV, sending overworn National Guard troops on a do-nothing mission at the Mexican border, all to give a rush to his ‘conservative base.’

Whoa, George. Your base is already scared to death. Each and every one of them will be out there, voting their stingy and self-centered little hearts out to hold on to what you and Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay squandered. The salad-days of unquestioned control are over and the hard times they are a-comin’, but Karl Rove is selling you a bum steer.

Psst, listen-up, George. You just went on national television, during prime-time, during the unforgivable period of sweeps-weeks and pissed off 43 million Hispanic-Americans.

They vote, George. Didn’t Karl explain that clearly? The Democrats haven’t a clue as to how to appeal to anyone and you wanted the Hispanic vote. Wanted it badly and now you can kiss it off.

Over in your Republican-controlled Senate,

(Reuters) - A U.S. Senate panel advanced a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on Thursday as the committee chairman (Republican Arlen Specter) shouted ``good riddance'' to a Democrat (Democrat Russell Feingold) who walked out of the tense session.

I’m sorry, I don’t know exactly how many gay and lesbian voters there are out there, but it’s a bunch. Amazingly, a substantial portion of them are conservative Republicans. I know that may amaze you, Mr. President, but being gay is a sexual orientation, not a political one. Gays and lesbians come in all shades and flavors, just another kind of rainbow coalition.

But your idiot base in the Senate lost’em, on a 10-8 vote exactly down party lines.

Not to be out-done, over on the House side, the House Budget Committee in March rammed through a resolution that cut $844 million from veterans medical care for next year. Somehow, the same committee managed to add $900 million for Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton.

Over the next 10 years (according to Veterans For Peace),

" the Republican changes would “cut $24.7 billion from veterans medical care, disability compensation and other benefits. This includes, by the way, payments to their families, should they be killed in action.”

So, unless I have this wrong, there's a National Guard non-com standing in an Iraqi mess line, about to be served by a Halliburton hash-slinger making ten times his pay rate. Gosh, that must feel good.

Plus the Halliburton guy doesn’t have to go out on patrol in the morning. Plus the guy isn’t losing his landscape maintenance company back home because he’s been away for two years and (irony of all ironies) no one is foreclosing on his house for late mortgage payments.

Ah, well, the housing bubble’s about to burst anyway. Probably a blessing.

A laundry-list of mistakes on Karl Rove’s part, just to keep Jerry Falwell and his kind happy on the pulpit.

Karl is understandably distracted these days, waiting for prosecutor Patrick (the All-American boy) Fitzgerald to either drop or not drop the other shoe.

Special prosecutors are a big part of what all this nut-cakeness is about.

George Bush, his closed and ego-centric administration and the Republican-majority horse he rode into town on, are terrified of a change in the congressional balance. All the teeter has to do is tauter in the direction of a Democrat majority and it’s Katie-bar-the-door. The usually Republican stiff upper lips have gone all quivery.

Karl Rove may have lost his head or his nerve or both, but he’s got his president and his congressional majority running headlong into the arms of disaster.

I wish there was some way I could get choked-up about that.

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