Monday, May 30, 2011

30 May 2011 We’re just here to support the troops


Make that raise money for our campaigns
 “Palin’s arrival at the event around 11:30 a.m. caused a huge commotion that event organizers struggled to contain. Photographers swarmed her; young men in suits hung around the press pack asking Palin to sign copies of her books. Rolling Thunder security yelled at press and fans not to touch the expensive bikes.
“I’m very not appreciative of the way she came in here,” Ted Shpak, Rolling Thunder’s national legislative director, said of Palin’s arrival. The former governor came in the front of the Pentagon’s north parking lot, where event staff and press were assembled. “If she wanted to come on the ride, she should have come in the back.”
“I don’t think she thinks the rules apply to her. She doesn’t need to have the traditional trappings of a presidential campaign,” Karl Rove, former adviser to President George W. Bush, said Thursday on Fox News
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55878_Page2.html#ixzz1Nqqk8x8G
Cassi Creek:  This seems to be exactly the situation.
                She never intended to play any sort of support role, to actually honor fallen and living veterans, KIA or MIA troops.  If she had, she would have ridden in the pack like anyone else.  Instead, she intentionally created a media clusterfuck that had no purpose beyond announcing her presence in yet another situation where she had no purpose, had nothing appropriate to say, or had any comprehension of what the event was meant to be.   She only cared to play her middle-school clique queen role, dominating the social scene for nothing but ego-gratification.  She doesn’t differentiate, is no t equipped to separate the election of a citizen to the office of POTUS from a middle-school student government popularity contest. 

 Palin has repeatedly placed her own ego above ethics, above filling any job that she has ever been assigned to or elected to carry out.  She refused to prepare for the VP debate in 2008, and instead attempted to behave like a high school proto-hooker.  She failed to study history so she lies about what she can and makes accusations of bias when anyone corrects her. 
                She will try to run for POTUS.  She’ll try to split the party and ride in on the teahadist/teavangelist base.  The only way to stop her is for the GOP to tell her and the teavangelists that the campaign rules apply to her just as to every other citizen.  She should not be allowed to wink and jiggle her way into the nomination.  Nor should she be allowed to spread her anti-intellectual, anti-science, teavangelist brand of religion and hatred across the nation without opposition.  It’s up to the GOP fat cats to slap her down.  The base voters are too poorly informed, too poorly educated, and too besotted with her middle-school personae to fill their roll in the electoral process correctly.
                Meanwhile, back in Tennessee:
Congressman David Phillip Roe 1st TN (R) publishes his Memorial Day Remarks:
Mr. Roe served two years of active duty, most likely to repay the Army for helping him with medical education expenses – a very common use of federal funds to benefit an individual that he apparently found acceptable in the 1970s.  As a physician, he spent his duty hours in a hospital with very little personal risk. 
            Today’s official statement includes these words:
As a veteran and a member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, I will continue to support legislation to better the health and the well-being of our service members.  Last Congress, the House passed a resolution I introduced urging all Americans and people of all nationalities to visit the national cemeteries, memorials, and markers on Memorial Day.  It is important to remember and visit the graves of our fallen veterans.
To help protect the sanctity of the final resting places of those who served, I have cosponsored H.R. 430, The Lance Corporal Jeremy Burris Act.  This legislation will criminalize any act of vandalizing a veteran’s gravesite.  It is our duty to protect the sacred resting place of our fallen heroes. “
            His expression of concern for our troops boils down to encouraging people to visit cemeteries and other monuments, and sponsoring a bill to make vandalizing a veteran’s grave a federal crime.  The latter action is exactly the sort of duplicate and less than necessary regulation that the GOP hates so much, unless it is their redundancy for political purposes. 
            Mr. Roe actually had a real chance to serve our troops and turned it down.  On 26 May 2001, Congress voted to refuse a $100.00/month increase in pay for troops under hostile fire or in imminent danger. The bill would have raised the benefit from $225.00/month to $325.00/month.  That extra $100/ month is a miniscule amount to begrudge the men and women who actually pull duty in places where people wish to kill them. 
            Mr. Roe, who proclaims his concern for troops and veterans so loudly, voted against the $100/month increase. 
            I wonder if Mr. Roe will be so willing to place his vote in opposition to the next automatic Congressional Pay raise.  I’m sure that a lot of men and women in units deployed into combat zones would love to be able to return his concern.
            Not surprisingly, Mr. Roe also voted  to derail a bill allowing gays to serve openly in our /armed forces, voted against speeding up the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and to spend additional billions for an alternate f-35 engine that Sec of Defense Gates has said is neither needed or wanted. 
            His concern for our troops seems to be like his concern for the ecology of Tennessee, secondary to the party line and to the demands of lobbyists and corporations. 


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