George W. Bush and his minions keep telling us we’re making progress in Iraq.
Now the head of the reconstruction team over there says what everyone else knows to be true: There isn’t much progress and the future doesn’t look good.
We’re sure the White House will find a way to spin their way out of this. Stay tuned. It will be fun to watch.
Sen. Hillary Clinton wants a million bucks in taxpayer funds for a museum dedicated to Woodstock.
Her Republican colleagues in the Senate say she can just forget about that idea.
Too bad. Makes more sense than spending billions in Iraq.
It’s no secret that Hillary Rodham Clinton scares the bejesus out of most hard-core Republicans.
To make matters worse, her top strategist now predicts 25 percent of GOP women will vote for her in 2008.
Over at the Republican National Committee, the party of the elephant is climbing the walls and screaming “say it isn’t so!”
Religious and cultural conservatives, a political force skeptical of the leading Republican presidential candidates, are caught in a tug of war between pragmatism and ideology.
“My head and my heart are fighting with each other,” said Phil Burress, an Ohioan who has lobbied hard for federal and state bans on gay marriage.
The vexing choices facing these voters:
_Rudy Giuliani, a thrice-married New Yorker who differs with them on abortion, gays and guns but who polls show offers a strong chance to beat a Democrat next fall.
It suddenly turns out that U.S. intelligence agencies have been gathering much more information about American citizens than anyone thought or is appropriate and the nation’s largest communications companies have been part and parcel of these activities. Is anyone really surprised?
With a certain smug national self-satisfaction, it is called the “classic American success story.” A young lad — or lass, for that matter — of no particular advantage or solvency starts at the very bottom and through pluck, spunk, moxie and other vaguely obscene-sounding virtues works his way to the top of some huge enterprise.
Nowhere is that more true than in Washington, D.C., a capital whose very fuel is plucky young people, a city of limitless opportunity because there is plenty of room at the bottom and, when the electorate rouses itself, a lot of turnover at the top.
To hear my male peers tell it, when we were young one of them might stumble across — or somehow purloin (sometimes from a father’s stash) — the rare Playboy magazine.
And that would pretty much have to last the entire neighborhood of adolescent boys about a year, until the next one came along. That’s all they got until maybe they saw a pornographic movie in their fraternity basement.
And along the way it was pretty clear they were doing something secret, unusual, out of the norm. Not okay.
There can’t be many baseball fans that are still surprised by lineups of big leaguers whose names end in “guez” or “rez” or “ina.” Count ’em: Rodriguezes, Ramirezes, Hernandezes, Gonzalezes, Perezes, Vazquezes, not to mention the Zambranos, Cabreras, Encarnacions, Suzukis, Matsuis, and Kims. Is there still a major league catcher not named Molina?
As the Senate debates a five-year, $286 billion agriculture-subsidy extravaganza, consider the heartwarming rhetoric about saving family farms. Who ever imagined such families included the Rockefellers?
As the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG.org) priceless Farm Subsidy Database reveals, philanthropist Mark Rockefeller received $228,350 in conservation subsidies between 2001 and 2005 for his Idaho farm. His brother, banking legend David Rockefeller, scored $29,615, thanks to his Hudson Valley farm.
If Americans really cared about the annual deficit or the $9 trillion national debt, they would choose Hillary Rodham Clinton or Ron Paul to be the next president. They’re among few candidates for the White House whose campaign spending is well within their means.