by Damozel | Secretary Rice is proud ---PROUD, I TELL YOU! --- that the US invaded Iraq and, presumably, that she did her little all to assist. (Read more...) Arianna Huffington remarks on Rice's remarks at CNN (here)
Meanwhile, some GOP members think it might be best for everyone if Bush just doesn't go to the GOP Convention.
Damn, that's just sad. As The New York Times so poignantly puts it:
What if your family was planning a big end-of-summer bash (a Grand Old Party, you might call it) but preferred that you not be seen — or heard?...“I don’t think there are a lot of people who want to see him at the convention,” said [Rep.Dana] Rohrabacher of California....
No hard feelings, big fella, but... yeah?
But don't feel alone, W.: according to the same article, Democrats are 'in a quandary' about what to do about Bill Clinton.
So just cry if you want to, Bill and W! Former presidents are not as much in demand as they used to be.
Here in Florida, Disney is embroiled in a fight with the NRA over Disney’s refusal to allow its employees to bring their guns onto Disney property. Recently, our Republican legislature — strongly backed by the NRA — passed a law allowing those of us with permits to keep firearms locked in our cars at work. Most employers objected:
For three years, much of the big-business community in Florida — including Disney, the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Retail Federation — had vigorously opposed legislation intended to ensure that employees could store guns in their vehicles while at work. That opposition was offset by strong support from the National Rifle Association, however, and such a bill finally was approved this spring by the state Legislature.
Now Disney thinks it has found a loophole. The NRA and Republican legislators think not. (Read more in The Orlando Sentinel; there’s lots). I live in Florida --- my money's on the Mouse.
Speaking of Florida, Governor Charlie Crist is getting married. The story is here. Much speculation has already ensued. There are many reasons, none of them good, why a man aspiring to the Vice Presidency can't be a bachelor. I'm glad he's found someone. I like Crist as well as I've ever liked any Republican governor, so I can't help wishing him well. McCain could do worse. I'm not sure he could do better.
In other news, North Carolina Senator and ‘conservative icon’ Jesse Helms has died.
What can I say? Humanly speaking, he seemed nice enough — genial, I guess. I did not agree with his politics,
but they were pretty much the same politics of all the men I knew of
his age and background. It was only later in my life that this began to seem
shocking. Though it's nothing I haven't heard before, I do find one or two of these quotes distasteful. But feel free to judge for yourself. Other bloggers have commented at memeorandum.
Here are the factors that went into making him what he was:
“I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year’s Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day,” Helms wrote in a newspaper column in 1956. (HuffPost)
That was mostly before my time, but I knew a lot of people who longed nostalgically all their lives for a return to those days, at whatever cost to others.
I remember, much later on, the following campaign:
He defeated black former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996 in racially tinged campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumbling up a job application, these words underneath: “You needed that job … but they had to give it to a minority.”
“The tension that he creates, the fear he creates in people, is how he’s won campaigns,” Gantt said several years later. (HuffPost)
With all due respect to Sen. Helms legacy, I'm just so happy to be living in a time where a man of mixed white and African-American parentage seems well on the way to becoming the next president.
Flip-Flopping Dominoes: A Blogger Offers Good Advice to the Obama Campaign
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