Eight years ago this week, on July 22, 1999, George W. Bush delivered his first presidential campaign speech, titled "The Duty of Hope." Speaking in Indianapolis, he rejected as "destructive" the idea that "if only government would get out of the way, all our problems would be solved." Rather, "from North Central Philadelphia to South Central Los Angeles," government "must act in the common good, and that good is not common until it is shared by those in need." There are "some things the government should be doing, like Medicaid for poor children."
Check in on the fate of Compassionate Conservatism here ...In 1956 President Eisenhower learned that Britain, France, and Israel had invaded Egypt ex post facto. The president was not pleased about the news and took immediate and decisive action: he instructed the Federal Reserve Bank to orchestrate a run on the pound and block the International Monetary Fund from the stabilizing the currency.
By holding Britain's currency hostage, based on a scenario he created, Eisenhower sent word by his actions that the U.S. would not assist in their economic bailout unless there was an immediate withdrawal from Egypt.
One of the lessons learned from this rather dubious affair: there can be no independent foreign policy if someone else controls your currency. It also begs the contemporary questions: how independent is American foreign policy? And how close is China from possessing the ability to do to the U.S. what Ike did to the British?
The former head of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans admitted today that he sexually abused a colleague during a national convention here last summer.
Michael Flory, a 32-year-old attorney from Jackson, Mich., pleaded guilty to sexual battery on the day he was to stand trial for rape.
The teary-eyed college student he overpowered in a downtown hotel room gasped and dabbed her eyes as Flory replied to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan's question, "Are you indeed guilty?"
"Sure - yeah," Flory said.
Why would the word "typical" leap to mind? The "Swiftboat" ploy has become a Right wing SOP*. Frankly, it sounds to me like an attempt to avoid "personal responsibility".The victim, who is 22, declined to speak after Flory's guilty plea.
She and some supporters lamented when the incident became public last winter that Flory and his followers within the Republican organization had been smearing her reputation in retaliation for accusing Flory of rape. [Assistant County Prosecutor] Skutnik said she found that to be true.
Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, and their holy book and many of their religious rituals are distinctly their own, Muslim Americans are by no means "the other" when it comes to religious life or politics in the United States. In many ways, they stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups.
In their level of religious commitment, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. In their basic political orientation, they closely resemble black Protestants as well as seculars. When it comes to their views on some social issues, such as homosexuality, Muslims' conservatism matches that of white evangelicals. Muslims are even more likely than evangelicals or any other group to support a role for government in protecting morality.
Ronald Reagan famously said, in his first inaugural address, that "government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." This belief has been an article of faith for reactionaries ever since, and from 2000 to 2006 the entire federal government was gripped by cultish obeisance to this belief.
We have learned, of course, to our sorrow, that when government is run by people who subscribe to this cult, government does become the problem -- look at the way the right has handled Katrina, Iraq, protecting communities from fire, and the aftermath of 9/11. For the same reason the College of Cardinals would not elect an atheist as Pope, we shouldn't trust those who don't believe in government to run it.
Last week, a Congressional hearing brought this into savage relief.
At the urging of the Sierra Club, Henry Waxman's House Oversight Committee looked into the scandal that, in providing hundreds of thousands of trailers to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA ignored evidence that the trailers it was buying were killing their residents with astronomical levels of formaldehyde.
