the absurdities continue. so the bush administration lost interest in afghanistan for the most part after it launched it's pseudo-directed military adventure there because it had shiny new neo-con toys in the iraq debacle---but the problem now with afghanistan is obama. astonishing. i guess meme-repetition is easier than thinking.
at the same time, though, there are things that take place that i have a really hard time understanding. this morning, for example, senate democrats voted to strip out the money required to shut down yet another bush-administration gift that keeps on giving in guantanamo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/us....html?_r=1&hpw
this, from harry reid, is about as foul a thing as i've seen emanate from this general sector:
Quote:
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“Guantánamo makes us less safe,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said at a news conference where he laid out the party’s rationale for its decision, which is expected to be voted on this week. “However, this is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this. Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.”
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people who have not been charged, not been brought to trial--who have been kept in a legal black hole for years now---not prisoners quite but "detainees"---many of whom have been tortured---the democratic leader in the senate declares "terrorists" and then scuttles into a good old fashioned bourgeois nimby thing.
it's a shame obama is not what the far right thinks he is. having to make nice to the center-right, allowing its discourse to continue framing debates--none of this is good. if obama was, in fact, anything like what the right pretends to itself he is, there'd likely be a much greater shift in the language of politics and with that new ways of framing issues and with that more room to manoever.
the stinking pile of wreckage left behind by the bush administration clings too much because the way of talking about issues has not yet adequately marginalized the right.