Negative Range
May 25th, 2006It appears to me that, wherever the Republicans and media go, negativity will follow, taking you from bad to worse.
The situation with Iran has gone from being a diplomatic nightmare to a show of aggression, as Iran test-fired a long-range nuclear missile. The missile’s range would reach any point in Europe and strike anyplace in Israel.
While the Iranians have not, to my knowledge, commented upon the test yet, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they’ll claim it was purely for transportation purposes. They need their missiles because someday, they’ll be using them to fly across continents. It’s purely peaceful, for sure, and any allegation to the contrary is a bigoted attempt to keep the Iranians on camels instead of missiles.
This is a faulty move on the part of the Iranians, of course. Presumably, they believe that shows of force and power will enable them to have higher leverage in negotiations. This isn’t so, of course, as what they’re doing is more likely to incite Israel into a frenzy and push George W. Bush — a man who already shudders to think of peaceful solutions — into half-hearting the discussions even more than he has already.
The world’s confrontation with Iran isn’t the only one going from bad to worse: the President’s White House is, as well, as he’s appointed his newest Chief Domestic Policy Advisor and it is a man from a Conservative magazine who writes about social issues, mainly. The man’s name is Karl Zinsmeister. If that doesn’t inspire confidence in the stomach of every American, I don’t know what will. I do know that Zinsmeister is no Bruce Reed. (A plug for The Has-Been!)
Congressional Republicans, too, have seen their situation go from bad to worse. Dennis Hastert is, says ABC, under investigation for corruption. To be fair, the Justice Department denies this, but to be even more fair, it is the Bush Justice Department. This is a Bush-League Government, pure and simple, and little that they say should be taken at face value.
Like this. Bush has given the Intelligence Czar the authority to exempt corporations from corporate laws. They can claim this justified in the name of National Security all they’d like, but this is, clearly, not.
Since I teased it by mentioning the media at first, the New York Times has this piece about the Clinton’s marriage, an article whose public purpose is minimal. I’m touched by the anecdote at the end, but I can’t quite grasp just what relevance it has to the public — what interest it is of the Times — what the Clinton marriage is like.