(no subject)
The Political Angst Returns
I think that my political anger is starting to resurface now that life has slowed down... Lo and behold, Congress has once again wasted its time and the time of all of us... first was the gay marraige thing, which is probably the least important issue for people to be talking about right now with everything else that's going on in the world. Now, it's this resolution about the Iraq war and the War on Terror being inextricably linked. The resolution is nonbinding, so it essentially does nothing but force everyone to cast votes and thereby be cast into one camp or another.
Regarding this Iraq War/War on Terror resolution, the thought did occur to me that perhaps congress should be a bit more like the supreme court in that with votes should come rationales for those votes. And I mean "real" rationales, not rhetorical garbage that politicians have no problem spewing. A vote for the resolution should be accompanied by the Congressman/woman's individual rationale for why they voted yes, sans the right-wing conservative rhetorical answers that they've been programmed with. A vote against the resolution should similarly be accompanied by an individual rationale for the nay vote, sans the liberal rhetoric. This way, it is clearly on record why you voted one way or the other. And, while the rationale would still be up for rhetorical interpretation by your opponents, the fact that the rationale exists would make it harder to spin your vote into either "Blind allegiance to the president" or "You don't support our troops or the Iraqis or the mission".
In the end, we can all agree that this is about nothing else but politics, about getting ammunition for one side to rail against the other in the November election. Congress would rather play politics than seriously address the slew of issues facing this country... shall we make a list?
- Immigration Reform
- Border Security
- A Strategy for getting out of Irag
- Finishing what we started in Afghanistan
- Fighting the real war on terror: Finding Bin Laden
- Guantanamo Bay
- Investigating the NSA wiretapping program
- Trade Deficit
- Economy
- Gas Prices/Alternative Energy/Energy Conservation
- Government Ethics and Corruption
- Preparing the gulf for hurricane season (which is already underway, BTW)
- The Crisis in Darfur
- Somalia, now under the control of Islamic militia
- Jobs
- Implementing post-9/11 governmental reforms
- Some sort of social security reform
- Emergency preparedness
- Education
I wonder where gay marriage and a useless resolution would fall on that list... Oh wait, they wouldn't even make the list.
Guarding Their Graves With Vigilance
I found this Newsweek article by John Meacham tonight in my bookmarks list... It's dated around Memorial Day, and was just an interesting read regarding presidential candor with his countrymen in difficult times.