Political Irony

As Electoral-Vote points out, for Republicans NY-13 is the congressional district that keeps on giving:

• First, Republican Congressman Vito Fossella tries to prove his love of family values by having two families. Fossella decides not to run for reelection.
• The Republicans pick Francis Powers to run for his seat, but his son (Francis Powers Junior) announces his intention to run against his dad (as a Libertarian) to prevent him getting elected. Then Francis Powers (senior) suddenly dies from a heart attack.
• Right at the deadline, the Republicans file the dead Powers as their candidate anyway, because they can’t find anyone else.
• Finally, the Republicans talk former assemblyman Robert Straniere into running.

Problem over, right?  Until one of the state’s most prominent Republicans, Guy Molinari, announces:

I’m going to do everything in my power to stop him. And if that means defeating him and a Democrat wins, that’s okay, too. I would rather have someone that’s honest and would do what’s right for the country, than support him. … He lies about everything. How do you pick a man like that to go to Congress?

This is proving to be a tough year for Republicans. NY-13 was the last congressional seat in NYC held by the GOP.

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), their terrorist list is growing by an average of 20,000 names a month. The ACLU says that over a million people are already on this list.

Let’s get real. Either we are creating a quarter of a million terrorists every year, or else our government has gone bonkers.  So let’s look and see who our government believes is a terrorist:

• The government itself — Senator Edward Kennedy is on the list. What makes this even scarier is that he is having trouble getting himself off the list, despite calling the Secretary of DHS personally. Also Congressman John Lewis, Congressman Don Young, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, and the wife of Senator Ted Stevens.
• Our own military — Major General Vernon Lewis, who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, holds a top-secret security clearance, and received the Distinguished Service Medal (the Army’s highest medal for service). Not to mention Marine Staff Sgt. Daniel Brown, who was blocked from flying while on his way home from his deployment in Iraq, and Air Force Master Sergeant Michelle Green.
• Airline pilots — Captain Robert Campbell, who not only has flown commercial airplanes for 22 years, but is a Navy veteran.
• Infants — including 6-year-old John William Anderson (see image at right) who was born on July 4, 2001 and was first stopped on his way to Disney World. Also the one-year-old daughter of Ingrid Sanden, and even the 11-month-old son of Sarah Zapolsky (can you imagine trying to convince the government that your 11-month-old is not a terrorist?)
• Nuns — Sister Glenn Anne McPhee, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ secretary for education, who spent 9 months trying to get off the list.
• Foreign dignitaries — including Nelson Mandela (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia.
• Dead people — including 14 of the 19 highjackers from 9/11 (DHS motto: “better too late than never”), and Saddam Hussein (this one wins the irony award).
• Anyone with common names — including Gary Smith, Robert Johnson, John Williams, and David Nelson (yes, including the son of “Ozzie and Harriet”).
• People the government simply doesn’t like — Sarosh Syed, who works for the ACLU, James Moore, author of “Bush’s Brain”, a book critical of the Bush administration, and Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) author of the famous song “Peace Train”, whose London-to-Washington flight was diverted and he was barred from entering the US.

When we start listing 11-month-old infants as terrorists, then I’d have to vote with “bonkers”. When too many people are on the list it makes the list itself worthless, since it doesn’t distinguish between real terrorists and innocent people. Not to mention that many of the people mentioned here were prevented from flying, were strip-searched, or in some cases even beaten, because they were mistakenly identified as terrorists.  It makes you wonder how many people being held in secret prisons (or even not-so-secret ones like Guantanamo Bay) are there by mistake.

from wftv.com

We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say leave, we would leave. –George W. Bush, 24 May 2007

So now that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has asked for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, are we going to keep our promise?

Of course not.  The Bush administration has put the talks on hold (read: he’s going to dump this quagmire on the next president’s lap). Then the Republicans will be able to blame whatever happens on the Democrats.