America, a once-great nation founded on a notion of freedom, has lost its way.
America is a country without a soul, controlled by leaders without conscience, fueled by political agendas without honesty and dominated by issues without purpose.
Some say the loss of soul began in 2003 when we invaded a sovereign nation without reason, using rationalizations based on lies, promoting a fear based on political expediency.
Abroad: Maureen Dowd reminded me about how Nixon used to have Kissenger tell the Soviets that while brilliant he was also “a dramatically disjointed personality … more than a little paranoid … when necessary, a cold-hearted butcher.’ ” With Nixon it was mostly fiction, but with Bush???? Now we have Bush and Cheney wanker wagging about Iran.
At home: Bush and Gonsales turned the Justice Department into a torture enabling program. I doubt the new attorney general will be any better.
Democratic 2008 White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton says she is happy she stuck out it out with her husband, the 42nd president, through “challenges” in their marriage.
Clinton said in an interview with the November issue of Essence magazine, that Bill Clinton is “so romantic” and recently brought her home a wooden giraffe from a trip to Africa.
“I know the truth of my life and of my marriage, my relationship and partnership, my deep abiding friendship with my husband,” Clinton said, according to excerpts of the interview on the magazine’s website.
Hurricane Katrina has many legacies for the Bush White House, none pleasant. One is the guarantee that as soon as disaster strikes in the United States, President Bush’s every move is closely scrutinized to gauge the speed and tone of his response to the suffering.
This became clear yet again on Tuesday, as the enormity of the wildfires sweeping across Southern California became apparent.
Betting that congressional Democrats’ opposition to the Iraq war will remain ineffectual, President Bush has asked for another $46 billion to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That brings the total amount he has asked for this fiscal year, which is barely 3 weeks old, to over $196 billion. If this funding goes through, the United States will have spent over $800 billion on the wars since 2001, most of it carried off budget.
You may think that this is the election when you’re finally going to be a gung-ho political activist. A stir-’em-up conservative. A shake-’em-up liberal. A straight-ahead independent. Ready to volunteer to work the phones or the blogs. Whatever it takes to help your presidential candidate carry your state.
But you are so gung-ho that you don’t realize that you’ve just been gung-had.
Hillary Rodham Clinton says she has a million ideas, and the dreadful, terrible shame is that one of them isn’t to do anything about Social Security except dance away and invent fabrications.
Jim Neal, the Democratic dark horse challenging North Carolina Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, has disclosed he is gay — making him one of the nation’s few openly homosexual candidates for a statewide office.
Neal, 50, a Chapel Hill investment banker, discussed his sexual orientation during an online interview with a liberal blog, NCBlue over the weekend. He said his family, friends and business associates already know.
“It’s no secret,” Neal said in an interview Monday. “Why would you not talk about the color of your eyes?”