Wednesday, April 23, 2008

In Which We Just About Give Up

Wow, so much good news in the Daily Star this morning. Where shall we begin?

How about with this headline? Dems glum over Clinton win. The paper's website inexplicably fails to link to the print story, instead shooting you to an AP piece about Clinton still being an underdog, so I am for the moment unable to provide precise quotes detailing the ways the Democrats are eating each other alive, or how Obama failed to capture the support of "certain kinds of voters," which apparently means the kind of white Democrats who told exit pollsters that they'll either vote for McCain if Obama gets the nomination (25%) or not vote at all (15%), which, in this election, are the same thing. Unless they're Catholic, of course, at which point the crossover voting jumps to fifty percent. Awesome, white Pennsylvanians! Enjoy your Miracle Whip sandwiches under the McCain administration!

If that doesn't depress you face-down into your Wheaties, we can move on to further stories of how the adminstration supports the troops, with this one: Senators want VA official out; suicide cover-up try is alleged.
Two Democratic senators on Tuesday called for the chief mental-health official of the Veterans Affairs Department to resign, saying he tried to cover up the rising number of veteran suicides.

Sens. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Patty Murray of Washington state said Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's mental-health director, withheld crucial information on the true suicide risk among veterans.

A number of Democratic senators said they were appalled at e-mails showing Katz and other VA officials apparently trying to conceal the number of suicides by veterans. An e-mail message from Katz disclosed this week as part of a lawsuit that went to trial in San Francisco starts with "Shh!" and contends 12,000 veterans a year attempt suicide while under department treatment.

Shh.

And with those three little letters, Dr. Katz sums up the Bush administration's view of the armed forces. Soldiers sure are handy props to trot out when Democrats need shaming in the eyes of the voters, but when they are physically or psychologically injured to the point that even the Army is leery of sending them back for a second or third or fourth rush into the breach, they need to be stuffed under the bed or hidden behind the curtains. Fixing people takes money--far less money than, say, nation-building among sworn blood enemies groups of people that have no interest in forming a nation together, but why split hairs?--and money can't be spent on people. Awesome, VA!

In the face of the US being led finally and irretrievably into hell by Bomb Bomb McCain and US troops being swept under the rug when they try to kill themselves, the third item this morning might look not so significant, but it is. House gives initial OK to bid to ban gay marriage, again. This one goes beyond the usual why the fuck are they bringing this up again because of the procedural crap Phoenix Republicans pulled to get it through the Arizona House and into the Senate.

The procedure maneuver used by supporters of the new version of the gay-marriage ban effectively blocks opponents from trying to amend the measure in the Senate.

The verbiage is attached to an unrelated bill that already has been approved by the Senate. That means senators have only two choices: Approve the House-passed version of the measure or reject it, with no opportunity to amend it.

What unrelated bill is it attached to? SCR1042, which would establish March 29 (the date in 1973 of the withdrawal of the last US troops from South Vietnam) as Vietnam Veterans' Day in Arizona. How many state senators will want to vote against that one solely to keep the utterly unrelated gay-bashing rider off the ballot in the fall? Uh huh. Thought as much. Hey, Arizona Republicans: fuck you. Just fuck you. And any Democrats who vote for this? Fuck you too.

And with that, the day can only look up from here.


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