Why ask hillary a serious question when you can ask her whether she prefers pearls or diamonds?
Because CNN scripted the debate!
Of course, the candidates would not have had anything to do with this….
And, would we have gotten a honest answer?
Via Alas, A blog.
schwarzenegger’s veto of legislation that would have allowed Californians an opportunity to vote on withdrawing the troops from Iraq is exactly wrong :
“There is no louder message Californians can send to Washington on the Iraq war than who should lead our nation,” he wrote. “Placing a non-binding resolution on Iraq on the same ballot, when it carries no weight or authority, would only further divide voters and shift attention from other critical issues that must be addressed.”
Excuse me but what issues can possibly be more important than Iraq?
As for messages about who should lead the nation, what bs. It should be pretty clear to one and all that the supposed end the Iraq debacle message of the last congressional election has been ignored by the republicrats.
A somewhat louder message might be a few million Californians (along with the rest of us) getting out on the street and tossing these folks out of office. Yes, including the governator.
Steve at Begging to Differ rolls out a pretty important idea:
He’s right, but then, sometimes regulatory chaos is a good thing. State-level law is a primordial policy soup, subject to the Darwinian pressures of elections and lawsuits. Good ideas adapt and propagate. Bad ones wither and die. It’s messy. It’s chaotic. It’s perplexing and unwieldy, but it’s a glorious disaster. It’s democracy. And it works.
I’m not going to bite on the It’s democracy bit but it can work and is a good reason to subject most, if not all federal law, to some slash and burn activity.
For that matter the largest geopolitical level this chaos should operate at is probably a city or county level.
There appears to be a good chance that abramoff will rollover on his former associates:
Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.
Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a “unique resource.”
Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.
What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.
It would be a good thing if this snares some dems as well. Perhaps people will begin understanding the kind of culture that evolves when you create a mob wealth transfer machine the size of the us federal government and that the smaller wealth transfer operations at the city, county and state level are simply breeding grounds for the scumsects at the federal level.
Via Raw Story.
Here is what USAID does:
USAID works in agriculture, democracy & governance, economic growth, the environment, education, health, global partnerships, and humanitarian assistance in more than 100 countries to provide a better future for all.
Here’s the qualifications of the new USAID director deputy assistant administrator:
More significant to the administration, perhaps, is the fact that Bonicelli is dean of academic affairs at tiny Patrick Henry College in rural Virginia. The fundamentalist institution’s motto is “For Christ and Liberty.” It requires that all of its 300 students sign a 10-part “statement of faith” declaring, among other things, that they believe “Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh;” that “Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead”; and that hell is a place where “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.”
Faculty members, too, must sign a pledge stating they share a generally literalist belief in the Bible. Revealingly, only biology and theology teachers are required to hold a literal view specifically of the Bible’s six-day creation story. Bonicelli has stated, “I think the most important thing is our academic excellence, [and the fact that we] combine it with a serious statement about our faith and values … I believe in six literal days, but I remain open to someone persuading me otherwise.”
This is certainly consistent with this view of bush and is a perfectly good reason to toss out both bushies and government as we know it. It is simply too risky to have so powerful an institution susceptible to occupancy by bushies or, for that matter, the other 535 534(click through).
Via Columbia Libertarians.
Update: Kip noted in a comment that bonicelli was not appointed director. I fixed that. Kip also points out that bonicelli has a more extensive resume than implied above. You can read more here but I’m still not impressed.