Thursday, October 20, 2005
Political Blogging: The Coburn Anti-Pork Amendment
Warning: incandescent, searing rant against my Republican party. Keep small children away from the screen.
Both my Senators here in Ohio voted today against the Coburm amendment. The Coburn amendment would have moved some of the rediculous amounts of pork in the budget over to paying for hurricane Katrina reconstruction costs. (Some of the best commentary on the Coburn amendment is at Instapundit. Just keep scrolling through and checking the links.)
Only 13 Senators had enough brass tacks to vote against pork in order to help pay for reconstruction in Lousiana. There's a complete list of how the votes fell here.
I am absolutely disgusted that my Republican senatorial representatives care less about fiscal sanity than idiotic, bloated, asinine earmarks.
In fighting the war on terror, my President has shown great courage and leadership in standing up to the most difficult, unpopular effort faced by a leader in a long time. I wish he would show some of that same courage and leadership in domestic matters, but he's abdicated everything to the irresponsible children on Capitol Hill.
Tomorrow I'm calling the offices of both Senators DeWine and Voinovich to let them know they won't see one red cent of campaign contributions from me. I'm not a huge contributor, but I refuse to spend my money to re-elect either one of them. I will also most likely vote for whaterver Democrat is running against them when they next come up for reelection, and I'm going to make that clear to their offices. Neither Senator has shown an ounce of fiscal leadership.
Right now I think the only way to fix this domestic insanity in Washington is a return to divided government where the Presidency and Congress are controlled by different parties. My Republican party, supposedly for small government and less spending, has shown itself completely incapable of having control over the reins. At least a divided government will somewhat limit this madness.
Do you include Iraq in the "War on Terror"? If so why aren't we invading Saudi Arabia where most of the 9/11 terrorists were from? And where most money for terrorism comes from?
ReplyDeleteYep, I count Iraq in the War on Terror.
ReplyDeleteDon't count me as any supporter of Saudi Arabia. Don't count me as one who thinks we've got a "special relationship" with what's a pretty nasty group of thugs in fancy clothes.
There are strategic decisions to be made in any war. Why didn't we invade Germany directly in WWII? Why didn't we head straight for the Japanese islands? We bit off the battles we had a chance to win as part of a strategic process to win the long-term war. I think Iraq is similar.
We've gotten rid of one tryant in the Middle East and have helped a new democracy rise. Is it perfect? No, but I'm a fan of Glenn Reynolds's line "Democracy is a process, not an event."
I think the thugs in Saudi are very, very worried about a neighbor where the masses are passionate about voting and controlling their own destiny. I also think that freedom will spread, slowly, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to places like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But you and I probably don't agree wtih much in this vein anyway. :D