Liberal's Weblog

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 12:44:44 GMT

I'm Back (at least for now)

As I explained to some of you who wrote by e-mail, my 90 year old mother is failing fast. In and out of the hospital and various nursing facilities then in and out of the hospital again and again and nursing facilities, etc. She and my sister live over 3 hours away and since my sister still works...the tasks of finding facilities and talking to doctors, nurses, caregivers, social workers, etc has taken up much of my time.

I hope this is the first of many days when I can post. But based on my experiences, I'll simply say...

OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BROKEN...THE PRESCRIPTION DRUG MEDICARE BENIFIT FOR SENIORS REALLY DID NOTHING...DOCTORS AND OTHER HEALTH CARE WORKERS AGREE.

FOR PROFIT COMPANIES SUCH AS INSURERS AND DRUG COMPANIES RULE ALL AND DICTATE WHAT HAPPENS TO SICK PEOPLE BASED ON THEIR (THE COMPANIES) BOTTOM LINE RATHER THAN WHAT IS BEST FOR THE PATIENT. ONCE AGAIN, THE DOCTORS AND OTHER HEALTH CARE WORKERS I'VE HAD CONTACT WITH AGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT.

Let us hope the Bush administration and this Congress really do the work of the people and start fixing it instead of consistently bending to the will of the for profit medical community.

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 14:17:42 GMT

ALBERTO GONZALES

Need I say more?

A White House counsel who's opinions on torture, the rights of the acused and keeping POW's held without Red Cross knowledge.

A White House and State House (yes, he was Bush's chief counsel in Texas) who only seems capable of telling the chief executive (wheter Pres. or Gov.) what he wants to hear

Yes he is a rags to riches story. "Pull yourself up with your own bootstraps" kind of guy. Do those characteristics any more or less dangerous to people who care about civil liberties?

Please see this editorial: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54854-2005Jan6.html.

So it's from the Post! Get over conservative prejudice about the supposidly liberal media simply read it for facts. See if both liberals and conservatives really want a guy like this in the highest judicial office in the land.

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:19:02 GMT

WHY JEB???

In this as in most administrations within the last 50 years, most decisions are made with political considerations being one of the components of the decision making process. So the question must be asked...why Jeb?

I can understand why Colin Powell went to the tsunami devistated areas of Asia but I can't understand why Jeb Bush went. The party line is that Jeb dealt with all the hurricanes that hit Florida so he's used to dealing with disasters. But he has not dealt with a disaster of this magnatude...no one has.

Usually the people chosen to go to areas like this are people sent to show the importance of the disaster to the country sending aid. The logical choices (if Bush didn't want to go as he probably should not have) would have been Powell and Dick Cheney. If not Cheney why not Powell's successor Rice. Or why not send the head of FEMA the person/group whose job it is to deal with relief and reconstruction after natural disasters.

There may have been many other logical choices in the Federal Government so why go to a state governor to represent the Fed? Could there be politics involved. Is jeb going to start getting more photo-ops as we head toward 2008?

We'll have to wait and see but it was an unusual choice.

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 11:06:15 GMT

I'M BACK

I've been away and with the holidays there was just no time to keep up with the weblog. But that's all over and I'm back!

Though. nothing political for today just thoughts and a prayers for those who were and will be impacted by the tsunami that hit Asia.

Political thoughts will resume tomorrow or Wednesday.

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 11:50:06 GMT

REMEMBER WHEN...

The fall of Baghdad would mean we'd be met by people throwing flowers at the our liberating troops.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

The violence will increase till we get Saddam.

The violence will increase till we get the provisional council ready.

The violence will increase till we turn over power to our hand-picked Prime Minister.

The violence will increase till the elections are held in January.

Now Don Rumsfeld comes out and says that we can expect the violence to continue even after the elections.

Sounds like "Vietnam" to me!

But the big question here is why is Rumsfeld getting all this flack? Sure he deserves it BUT doesn't the buck stop with Bush.

Perhaps that's why Bush wants "nice guy" Rumsfeld to stay. It keeps the critics (even conservative Republicans now) off his back!

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:26:21 GMT

Too Bad Bush Didn't Hold This News Conference BEFORE The Election

Along with long, winding, unfocused answers given on inportant subjects at his news conference yesterday (it reminded me a little bit of BUSH DEBATE 1) we did get some important information.

It appears that Don Rumsfeld may have a tough exterior but he is a nice guy at heart!

I guess for Bush...all the qualifications you need to be Defense Secretary is to be a nice guy.

No leadership skills. No good decision making skills. No skills coordinating complex tasks. No knowledge of running a war against urban insurgents. All you need you need is to be a nice guy. A guy so nice, kind and compassionate that you use a machine to sign letters of condolence to the 1500+ families of soldiers killed during the war on terror. That's an average of less than 50 letters a month since 9/11.

OR...

Is this just one more example of how Bush holds no one accountable, INCLUDING HIMSELF, for the horrendous decisions that got us into the mess that's now called the war to democratize Iraq (while the Iraqi people look down the barrels of our guns).

Can we trust any other decisions he has and will make over the next 4 years?

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 13:24:31 GMT

William Kristol And I Finally Agree

From the Washington Post 12/15/2004

The Defense Secretary We Have

By William Kristol

Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page A33

"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,

(Donald Rumsfeld Briefs The Press Last Month./Kevin Lamarque -- )

Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn't want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.

Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer to Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard:

"Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip."

So the Army is in charge. "They" are working at it. Rumsfeld? He happens to hang out in the same building: "I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. . . . And that is what the Army has been working on." Not "that is what we have been working on." Rather, "that is what the Army has been working on." The buck stops with the Army.

At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn't boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, "It's interesting." In fact, "if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up." Good point. Why have armor at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago? It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.

Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier last week, when asked about troop levels? "The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control." Really? Well, "the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General Abizaid wanted."

Leave aside the fact that the issue is not "the number of troops we had for the invasion" but rather the number of troops we have had for postwar stabilization. Leave aside the fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task -- and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available. Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003. And leave aside the fact that if our generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, this is a consequence of Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the size of the military after Sept. 11.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week, after a fashion: "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine." Except he fails to take responsibility.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?

In Sunday's New York Times, John F. Burns quoted from the weekly letter to the families of his troops by Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, an Indiana state trooper who now commands the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad:

"Ask yourself, how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?" Col. Smith's answer: "They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed. . . . They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues."

These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.

The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard.