Coward?

After watching the response to Murtha, I gotta tell ya. It is finally reaching the nth degree of silliness.

He himself said it best in his response to Unca Cheney's comments. I think there are a lot of folks are starting to come around, and I bet they would agree with a lot of the following sentiments:

• Supporting the troops -- I'm all for paying the folks better, supplying them better, and not squandering their lives in misbegotten wars. And by folks, I mean the men and women in the military, the ones who put their necks on the line for their country, who shed their blood and lose their limbs, many of whose minds are shattered by the reality you see when you have your boots on the ground. Meanwhile the civilian contractors are being paid 10 times the amount the troops are. It's no wonder Bush's buddies have done such a lame job of rebuilding Iraq. They can't keep infrastructure maintained at home.
• Fighting terrorism -- This idea has been modified to 'opposing violent extremism'. Whatever. Everybody is starting to realize that going into Iraq hasn't had the effect of reducing terrorism, it's just been an exercise of throwing gasoline on the fire. Speaking of gas, have you noticed it's about twice as much as it used to be? Glad the supply lines have been 'secured'.
• No Child Left Behind -- and your school gets a pittance of federal funding as long as they turn over student records to the DoD, for recruiting purposes. Incidently, I noticed quite a few people under 18 sitting in at the Superdome for a week; quite a few of their grandparents (and great-grand) as well. I might seem a bit disingenious, bringing up Katrina along with school funding, but while I'm indulging in mixed metaphor, I'd like to remind you that those folks you saw stranded in the Big Easy are a good picture of what happens to ordinary folks in the Bush Dream. The people stranded were not only the indigent; they were also the waitresses, the garbagemen, the mailroom clerks, the construction workers, basically from every underpaid but overworked sector. There were 100,000 people stranded in downtown -- you think as hard as it is to get social help they were all welfare queens? They are a good picture of the exact kind of folks that are useless to the Current Admin. And rest assured, it's the folks that get dirt at work on their hands, black or white, that are still doing without, down on the coast. Bush can fly back to DC in the middle of the night to 'save' Terri Shaivo, but can't get anything going on for live functioning folks down in Louisiana. Mmm, mm mmm.

The majority of the National Guard troops from Louisiana (along with a lot of their equipment -- why you need high-water vehicles in the desert is beyond me), are deployed overseas. The very people armed with the knowledge, skills, and equipment to deal with a natural disaster in their own backyard down in the bayou, were on the other side of the planet. Not mentioned much in the press, the wrong-headed policies of rebuilding Iraq are being practiced on our own soil. In Bush's America, those that have should get.

And that is repeated again and again in his tax cuts. And in the folks who get the gummint contracts. And the companies that pollute, and et cetera. Anybody who's seen that old movie Network can refer to Ned Beatty's speech to Howard if they want to understand Bush's goal for the world.

Three more years of this? Next time you see our Petulant Pansy Bush or any of his combat dodging scum calling people like you with common sense a coward, tell 'em to look in a fuckin' mirror.

Word.