Pentagon to Cut Benefits for PTSD Afflicted Vets (Links)
Can someone please remind me why ‘Average Joes’ are supposed to support the GOP? The Bush Administration is rushing to de-regulate hazardous chemicals in the workplace and the Bush Pentagon is cutting benefits for veterans with PTSD. An American special ops intelligence officer says that the number of soldiers killed as a result of America’s torture policy ‘is close to the number of lives lost on September 11, 2001.’ Condoleeza Rice says ‘you won’t…hear from me again‘, and I’m beginning to like her more and more. Everyone is talking about Bush’s admitted ‘unpreparedness for war.’ Meanwhile, Jeb Bush suggests that the GOP create a separate ’shadow government’. The San Diego Union Trib profiles Howard Kaloogian, a ‘local conservative’ who appeared in that ‘daffy palin ad‘. The following people don’t know history from a hole in the ground: Tom Friedman and Joe Klein. Peggy Noonan is also trying to join the ’saying stupid things’ club. Upon leaving office, George Bush will miss ‘flying in the presidential airplane and the food at the White House,’ as well as trains, dumptrucks, and making mudpies. California officials will investigate accusations that the Mormon Church violated its tax-exemption requirements by participating in the effort to ban same-sex marriage in California. At Mother Jones, Kiera Butler interviews historian Frank Rich. Finally, am I actually supposed to care about the LA Times‘ front page series profiling the unlikely romance between a racist California murderer and ‘a thoughtful, successful Omaha woman’? Maybe critics are right that LAT owner Sam Zell is in the process of ‘eviscerating some of [America's] best newspapers.’
Keeping It In the Family, or The Death Throes of a Dynasty
Let’s think back to the primaries and recall how historic they were turning out to be. Democratic front runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were neck and neck in the primaries. Though it wasn’t clear who would take the nomination, we knew that we were in for an historic campaign either way.
Obama would of course overtake Clinton and became the first black Democratic presidential candidate, and by August we knew it was either McCain-Palin or Obama-Biden that would triumph. Perhaps there was a sense of relief, too, in what those two tickets had in common: neither had a Bush or a Clinton anywhere in sight.
