Here’s some “news” from the Associated Press:
Scrutiny of Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s travel has led to the belated disclosure of at least 198 previously unreported special interest trips by House members and their aides, including eight years of travel by the second-ranking Democrat, an Associated Press review has found.At least 43 House members and dozens of aides had failed to meet the one-month deadline in ethics rules for disclosing trips financed by organizations outside the U.S. government.
When stories about Tom DeLay’s ethical problems first broke, I was astounded by the liberal media’s naïveté, willful blindness — whatever it was that caused them to focus solely on his lapses. Surely these journalists know they all do it. According to House ethics rules, Members are not supposed to take trips abroad funded by lobbyists, nor are they to accept “gifts.” But they do it all the time. (See Web of Hypocrisy.)
A politician is a politician, and from time to time they all get sloppy or try to find ways to cut corners and fudge the truth. Life would be much easier if we just accepted it. In many ways Republicans are no better than Democrats. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t jump on the “Defend DeLay” bandwagon. I knew some of the media reports about him were true and that politicians wagging their finger in his face had done the same thing. I used to have a knee-jerk habit of defending Republicans whenever an accusation was made, but I no longer waste the energy.
In that regard, I’ll no longer waste energy trying to figure out what’s wrong with George Bush, either. I’ve often said he’s not conservative enough for me. It’s actually worse than that. His “reign” has been disappointing. He squandered four years trying to “compromise” with hard-headed liberals, although Republicans dominate all three branches of government. At first I thought he was playing it cool, lying in wait until he won his second term, at which time he’d turn up the heat and play hard-ball right down the line. But he hasn’t.
While the media attack, he should be running an anti-media campaign and come out swinging, pushing his agenda the same way Democrats would if they were in the majority. But he hasn’t. He seems intimidated by the media even as leftist journalists are being exposed as the not-so-covert Democratic operatives they are. Instead of vehemently defending and supporting his judicial nominees, for example, he lets them dangle in the wind as rabid demagogues compare them to Nazis.
And illegal immigration. What more can I say about that? A president who defines himself by the “war on terror” clearly has no regard for security breaches in his own country as Middle Eastern men jump the border along with Mexicans. Men and women are dying on foreign soil, leaving behind orphans, widows and widowers, but too little is being done on our own soil to fight the war.
While we dopes are being felt up at the airport and our personal items rifled through, illegal aliens are downstairs working on the airplanes! Some of those “Mexicans” are probably Arab terrorists. Who knows? I guess we’ll just have to wait for another plane-missile before we know for sure.
Thanks to George Bush and his drunken-sailor spending, I can’t even brag about the “small government” Republican party anymore. As he tries in vain to appeal to moderates (For what reason?), he’s playing it too close to the middle. But I suppose he’s worried about his legacy, trying to maintain some misguided “spirit of cooperation.” The people who elected him to office did so for a purpose: to push the conservative agenda. So far that purpose has been subverted. As a result, George Bush is ineffective.
A politician by any other name would still stink.
