CampusTavern.com

…and now I must bid a final adieu!  I graduated back in May and have decided not to further my education at this time.  I’ve had a great time being a part of CampusTavern and wish you all the best!

Ciao,
Belle 

President Bush’s habit of running to Congress every time more money is needed to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has come to an end, thanks to a Senate bill passed 98-0 Wednesday that will force the President to submit a detailed projection of costs for the wars in the annual budget.

Before the vote, President Bush repeatedly asked for billions of dollars in funding for the wars through emergency bills. These funds are not allocated in the federal budget prepared annually by the administration.

Because the emergency bills are not offset by spending cuts, they add to the burgeoning federal debt.

The administration has resisted putting war spending through the regular budget process, arguing that the uncertainty of war means it cannot foresee many costs.

“The White House has shown no sign that it will take the fiscally responsible course of beginning … to budget for the cost of the wars,” said Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee that oversees federal spending.

McCain has frequently complained that the war supplementals — nine since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — have become vehicles for billions of dollars in spending on lawmakers’ pet projects. Routine military spending also increasingly has crept into the emergency bills, he said.

The Senate has made it clear that President Bush must be held accountable for his spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. They will no longer allow billions of dollars in emergency bills to accumulate into the mountain of national debt that is growing higher every day.

In addition to passing this bill, the Senate voted 93-6 to reject a measure that would have issued a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. The bill, introduced by Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), called for most troops to be removed from Iraq by December 31.

During a May trip to Iowa, Senator Bayh was asked about his support for the Iraq war. He responded by saying that

If the Iraqi factions “get their political act together — and we will know this in the next six to eight weeks… if they can form a government… then there’s something to work with there.” If not, then “we’re out.”

Senator Bayh has remained adamant that we need to give the new Iraqi government time to get established before pulling out troops.

The Washington Post and the New York Times are reporting that an investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that nearly 1.4 billion dollars of federal aid after Hurricane Katrina was actually sent to fraudulent claimants or used on items other than basic necessities.

The GAO report, released Wednesday in testimony, found that some aid was spent on football tickets, a bottle of champagne, and a 70 day vacation in Hawaii.

Millions of dollars in housing assistance and other aid were also distributed to over 1,000 prisoners, including one prisoner who received over $20,000. Although some inmates may have had property damaged by the hurricane, most would not have been eligible for assistance from FEMA.

“It is shocking and appalling” said Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who is chairman on the subcommittee leading the investigation.

Although mistakes were made, FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker explained that after a disaster like Katrina, the main priority is to send assistance to the victims as quickly as possible. He added:

“Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately,”

But had the 1.4 billion dollars lost in fraudulent aid claims actually been distributed properly, they could have been used to help fund vital recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast rather than being used on excessive luxuries.

To this day, ten months after Katrina made landfall, many areas are still in dire need of funding and assistance according to Bill Quigley, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law.

Quigley has documented the plight of those trying to pick up the pieces of their broken lives in the ravaged region in several articles, including “Eight Months After Katrina.” In that article, he examines several areas that are still suffering from lack of aid and funding.

According to Quigley, the healthcare industry was hit particularly hard by the hurricane.

New Orleans has lost 77% of its primary care doctors, 70% of its dentists and 89% of its psychiatrists since Katrina.

The loss of so many of the city’s medical professionals have left hospitals and clinics overburdened.

Nationally, it takes an average of 20 minutes to take a patient from an ambulance waiting in front of hospital to emergency room. In the New Orleans area, according to one surgeon at the East Jefferson Hospital, load times are usually 2 hours, but sometimes more. The longest time he’s seen is 6 hours, 40 minutes, of a patient waiting in ER driveway to receive care.

Education has also suffered as a result of Katrina. In “Eight Months After Katrina,” Quigley reports:

Lower Ninth Ward residents have had no public schools open since Katrina. They wanted their neighborhood school, Martin Luther King, Jr., repaired and fixed up after it took in ten feet of water. Authorities refused to fix it up. So the residents, joined by members of Common Ground and the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, decided to do it themselves. They started gutting the moldy parts and repairing and re-painting the school. They continued until the State Superintendent of Education called the police and stopped the work saying the neighbors were doing more harm than good. After days of public outcry of support of the volunteers, the State backed off. Volunteers went back to work, creating a place for education in the neighborhood as well as a symbol of resistance.

It is a travesty when people cannot receive adequate healthcare or children cannot attend school

On September 7, 2005, Senator Evan Bayh delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate in which he said:

“What we are seeing in New Orleans is the result of a series of misjudgments and misdirected priorities that have all produced an increasingly tragic result, a people unprotected by their own Government.”

Senator Bayh will not stand for an Administration which makes decisions that leave American citizens unprotected and vulnerable. He has worked hard to protect the nation from this type of careless leadership

Just thought I’d share with y’all that the latest Point-Counterpoint (a weekly debate of sorts between myself and Fred of RealDebateWisconsin) is up at Leaning Blue.

This week’s theme is Commencement, which I thought would be fitting to announce here.

President Bush says that our civil liberties are being “fiercely protected” despite news today that the NSA had call lists from AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth.  I’m sorry, but what part of the civil liberties boat did he miss?  The last time I checked monitoring citizens’ phone calls and wiretapping were the antithesis of protecting civil liberties. 

I know many people are going to hide behind the whole “we’re at war” excuse for such blatant disregard for citizens’ privacy, but the current administration’s policies have reached Orwellian proportions.  I want the government to monitor foreign terrorists, not who I talk to and what I do in my own personal life.  America was founded on the principles of freedom and democracy.  We use these “god terms” as an excuse to wage war in the Middle East, yet we do little to ensure their practice in our own country. 

 
Senator Russ Feingold and the Progressive Patriots Fund made a great ad regarding Bush’s disregard for civil liberties.  You should check it out here.  I applaud Senators like Feingold, Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy for standing up against such illegal actions.  The President’s sole job is to uphold the Constitution, will someone please remind Bush of this?

When your approval rating is just over 30% in any field, expect to get some criticism from some people.

When you’re the President of the United States, expect this criticism to be often and during unexpected times. If these last few days have proved anything it’s that there is going to be some criticism handed out to George W. Bush when he’s really not expecting it.

Nearly a month ago, a man named Harry Taylor stood up to ask a question at a Bush PR event in Charlotte, North Carolina that was focusing on the war on terror. Taylor said:

“What I wanted to say to you is that I — in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and – I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.”

Bush went on to talk about how he wouldn’t apologize for wiretapping like the man had asked him to earlier in his question. Whatever. The point is that this guy stood up in front of a crowd of those pre-screened people who are given questions to ask the president, (you know, really tough questions, like “How has your faith helped you through the Iraq War?”) and basically ripped Bush a new one. This got little coverage from the media when it happened, as it was seen as just another Bush bashing.

Then, last weekend, at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in Washington, a much more known name, Stephen Colbert, got up to give the final address of the night, he was the main event. He proceeded to throw everyone a curve ball and absolutely lambaste Bush with humorous insults. Here is another link to the video, even though I know it’s a couple posts down, there are 2 parts to it. Below are my favorite lines from his nearly 20 minute speech:

“My name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it’s my privilege to celebrate this president. We’re not so different, he and I. We get it. We’re not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We’re not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say “I did look it up, and that’s not true.” That’s ’cause you looked it up in a book.”

“I said it’s a celebration. I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”

“Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in “reality.” And reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

“Mayor Nagin! Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city! Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I’d like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., the chocolate city with a marshmallow center. And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It’s a Mallomar, I guess is what I’m describing, a seasonal cookie.”

Okay, I’ll stop. Colbert killed that night and really left everyone stunned. Colbert showed that he isn’t actually an ultra-conservative; he just plays one on TV. His constant jabs at the president and where the country has gone were not only hilarious, but just a great way to criticize someone without getting booed off stage. Colbert has already sparked so much praise and attention for his speech that it has already become an epidemic on the internet.

Then just a few days ago in Atlanta, a retired CIA analyst named Ray McGovern stood up at an event to discuss the Iraq War and confronted Donald Rumsfeld for lying by just using Rumsfeld’s own words from previous interviews. This tactic had Rumsfeld fired up after already having his speech interrupted a couple times when people with signs that said “Guilty of War Crimes” stood up and started yelling. When McGovern came up to ask his question, Rumsfeld was defensive, and there is a point in the video where he stalls and you can see he realizes what he did actually say, and still tries to cover his own ass.

MCGOVERN: So I would like to ask you to be up front with the American people, why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary, that has caused these kinds of casualties? why?

RUMSFELD: Well, first of all, I haven’t lied. I did not lie then. The president spent weeks and weeks with the central intelligence people and he went to the American people and made a presentation. I’m not in the intelligence business. They gave the world their honest opinion. it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

MCGOVERN: You said you knew where they were.

RUMSFELD: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and –

MCGOVERN: You said you knew where they were Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words.

Stop for a second. Rumsfeld clearly says he didn’t say that he knew where they were. But in a 2003 interview on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Rummy clearly said “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” Those are his own words. He was caught in a lie, then tried to lie to cover it up. Oops.

In Atlanta, Rumsfeld then went on to talk about how the troops honestly thought that there were WMD’s in Iraq, blah blah blah you’re disrespecting the troops. McGovern also called him on that saying:

“That’s what we call a non sequitur. It doesn’t matter what the troops believe; it matters what you believe.”

McGovern was then told to stop talking, and he was nearly kicked out of the building. End of debate. Something else that was interesting was how Rumsfeld said he wasn’t in the intelligence business. So I guess that means Rumsfeld doesn’t ever analyze intelligence to maybe help him make decisions. This seems odd, he is the Secretary of Defense, plus what does he base his decisions on then? In a 2002 briefing at the chamber of commerce in Atlanta, Rumsfeld talked about analyzing the intelligence that proved there was “bulletproof” evidence that there were members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. But wait, I thought he wasn’t in the intelligence business.

“We ended up with five or six sentences that were bullet-proof. We could say them, they’re factual, and they’re exactly accurate. They demonstrate that there are in fact al Qaeda in Iraq.”

He was specifically talking about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who it turns out was in a part of northern Iraq that wasn’t controlled by Saddam Hussein, and in Baghdad for a few days when he needed medical treatment. He has since taken over as the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but Rumsfeld was wrong in what he said in 2002. If anything he provoked more terrorist action in Iraq. I’m not going to get into that now, but the fact is that there’s a reason that everyone wants this guy to resign, he’s simply not very good at what he does, and he has trouble when he’s confronted like he was in Atlanta.

When it all comes down to it, it’s really very simple why we need people like Colbert, Taylor, and McGovern. They are the ones who will get up on a national stage and say what a lot of people are thinking. They are smart enough to articulate what people want to say in a way that’s both logical and confrontational. These guys make America what it is and use their rights of free speech to the fullest.

I’m proud to be a democrat when I see these clips. I know, these guys aren’t all democrats, but they’re doing what I wish I could do. Just getting up there and speaking directly to the President is an honor in and of itself, but to do what they did takes unrelenting courage. I wish I could do that. It’s great that we have so many people in this country willing to do that. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, thanks fellas, for simply standing up for what so many of us know is right.