Neocon watch - avoid hard issues, stick with fluff

With all the problems we're facing, many of which were created in the last 5 years, Congressional Republicans decided that the 4 instances of flag burning deserved a full debate and vote, instead of things like education, clean air and water, disaster preparedness, the cost of gas, healthcare, social security, the debt, the trade deficit, veterans' benefits, and a myriad of other real issues. And after all that time they devoted to the subject, they decided not to pass the bill anyway. Of course, they're labeling Democrats as traitors for this outcome, but take a wild guess which party is in control of both houses of Congress? Yet another political stunt instead of doing the jobs that people elected them to do.

Now let's go back to October, 2001. One of the ways that Bush proclaimed that the US would go after the terrorists is to go after their financing. US investigators would start looking into financial transactions that supported terrorist organizations. Now return to the present day where the Bush Administration reiterated this to the press, but now it appears that they're not just looking into terrorist financial records, but may be looking into bank records of every American, just like they're looking into all of our phone records. Of course, the justification is the war on terror, but they're going after the private information of all Americans. As an example, they've demanded an inquiry into the private financial lives of the chief scientists researching global warming. Sadly, that's not a joke - these honest people are facing federal government harassment because they told the truth. Talk about abusing power. Oh wait, it gets better. What will the Bush Administration do to itself for making this information public (the actual facts reported are not secret)? By proclaiming that the New York Times should be shut down, because they were one of several media outlets that picked upon this old story from 2001. That's right, the neocons leak information, and then blame the messenger that you most want to persecute. Of course, I guess the NYT brought it upon themselves for thinking that the First Amendment to the Constitution was still relevant. Nope, if they just spouted neocon talking points and followed the political agenda they wouldn't have a problem.

With all this abuse of power, the neocons are still reaching for more. Even though the neocons are in complete control of both houses of Congress and do exactly what they're told by the White House political arm, they want more power. They've renewed call for giving the President carte blanche power to strike individual characters from any piece of legislation brought before him. Here's what Bush actually said:

"I was disappointed, frankly, though that more Democrats didn't vote for the (line item veto) bill, especially those that are calling for fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. I mean, you can't call for fiscal discipline on the one hand and then not pass a tool to enhance fiscal discipline on the other hand. You can't have it both ways, it seems like to me."

Keep in mind that the President's own neocon handlers have written every single bill that the President has passed. They have all the power in crafting the budget, and have driven us deep into debt. The bloated, pork-laden budgets have been crafted by a single political party. Yet he wants to blame democrats for the lack of fiscal discipline? Can anyone see how that makes any amount of sense at all?

Meanwhile, Democrats are fighting the Republican attempts to increase Congressional pay by another $15/hour, because they feel it's more important to lift the minimum wage that has languished at $5.15/hour ever since the Republicans took control of Congress. Now who is it that's fiscally responsible?

(political cartoon credit to Tom Toles and Ben Sargent)