The McCain camp just released a list of its bigtime speakers for the GOP convention. Campaign comedian Rick Davis said of the line-up,
"The senator wanted the list of speakers to showcase the 'diversity' of the Republican Party."
Okay, hold onto your sides, folks (to keep them from splitting).
Here's the ever-so-diverse A list:
* McCain
* Lieberman
* Schwarzenegger
* Guiliani
* Cheney
* George W. Bush
* And whatever white old man he picks as VP
More of Rick Davis' delusion:
"I think one of the things that is important, especially for John McCain, as unique a politician as he is, is to demonstrate the diversity and differences of ideology I would say of our party. I think one of the things that people forget about is we are not a very monolithic as a party. We really want to show some of that."'
Oh, I forgot... Laura Bush is also speaking at the Convention. Now, THAT makes it diverse.
I know, I know, I know. This topic has already been diaried, ad infinitum.
I just wanted to add a little more shit to the pile.
Did anyone see Shrub at the opening ceremony of the Olympics? Tapping that American flag against his thigh, looking around with his beady little eyes like he was sitting in a timeshare presentation looking for an excuse to cut out early?
And Laura Bush, with that ridiculous fan, and that scowl on her face, looking absolutely miserable.
I didn't sleep very well last night. One of the reasons was that I had gotten the news about the proposed redefinition of contraception to mean abortion. As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, this means that allowing hospitals to refuse to dispense Plan B to rape victims is plausible. "Discriminating" against pharmacists who will not dispense birth control or Plan B will also not be acceptable. As an owner of a pharmacy, say, I couldn't refuse to hire someone who blatantly told me that they didn't believe women should be allowed to take birth control pills. Last night HHS and Bush did nothing less than propose chaos in health care ethics -- the provider has more rights than the patient.
So there I was at 2:30 this morning, trying to get comfortable and fall back asleep. I was not very successful.
"I think she probably meant I'm more proud, you know, is what she really meant," Bush said. "You have to be really careful in what you say, because everything you say is looked at and, in many cases, misconstrued."
I've always liked her, she also has nice things to say about HRC. I think it's important to recoginize when people on the other side of the aisle, fence whatever, do or say something admirable.
Michelle Obama has a new defender from those who say she isn’t patriotic enough — First Lady Laura Bush. In an interview with ABC News, Bush said that Obama’s February remark that she was proud of the United States “for the first time in my adult life” was misconstrued.
“I think she probably meant ‘I’m more proud.’ That’s what she really meant,” Bush said from Afghanistan.
“You have to be realy careful in what you say because everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued,” she said.
Let me first say that if Mrs. Clinton had gotten the nomination, I would've voted for her in a New York Minute. Everything Obama said about her yesterday was true: She has busted her butt for Democrats. But yesterday when it became apparent that it was officially over, I said to my girlfriend "We just dodged a bullet". I'll explain why I felt that way below that imaginary crease in the paper...
Last year, First Lady Laura Bush infamously said of the costs of the Iraq war for the American people, "no one suffers more than their President and I do." Now we know why. While U.S. troops were sacrificing life and limb in the battlefields of Baghdad, President Bush sacrificed...golf.
courtesy of Oliver Stone....and apparently just before the Presidential Election this November, says ABC News Australia........
Director Oliver Stone has landed a distribution deal with Lionsgate to get his upcoming film about President George W Bush into theatres in October, shortly before the US presidential election.
The political biography is to be called W and features No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin as Mr Bush.
Shooting is slated to start in Louisiana this week, Lionsgate said.
In addition to Brolin, the film stars Elizabeth Banks (Seabiscuit) as first lady Laura Bush, James Cromwell (The Queen) as former president George H W Bush and Ellen Burstyn (Requiem For A Dream) as his wife, Barbara Bush.
Rounding out the cast are Thandie Newton (Crash) as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Jeffrey Wright (Syriana) as former secretary of state Colin Powell, Scott Glenn (The Bourne Ultimatum) as former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ioan Gruffud (Fantastic Four) as former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Still to be cast are the roles of Vice-President Dick Cheney and former White House political adviser Karl Rove
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday on the crisis in Myanmar, calling on the government there to allow more foreign aid workers into the country:
"This is not a matter of politics, this is a matter of a humanitarian crisis and it should be a matter that the government of Burma wants to see its people receive the help that is available to them."
This, of course, is the same Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who refused to allow 1586 much-needed Cuban medical personnel into the United States when a hurricane ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the same Condoleezza Rice who spent her time shopping for shoes and attending Broadway plays while New Orleans was drowning. Condoleezza Rice no more cares about the fate of the people of Myanmar than she did about the people of New Orleans.
The death toll and suffering in Burma continues to rise in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis (Urdu for daffodil). The situation is dire.
Aid has barely trickled into one of the world's most isolated and impoverished countries, although experts feared it would be too little to cope with the aftermath of Nargis, which left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million homeless.
Witnesses saw little evidence of a relief effort under way in the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta region.
"We'll starve to death, if nothing is sent to us," said Zaw Win, a 32-year-old fisherman who waded through floating corpses to find a boat for the two-hour journey to Bogalay, a town where the government said 10,000 people were killed.
"We need food, water, clothes and shelter," he told a Reuters reporter.
But, toward the end the questions strayed to issues closer to Laura's heart. MSNBC, however, took a little time to pick up the shift of subject as you can see over at Huffington Post. One side of the screen, disaster scenes from Myanmar/Burma, the other a laughing Laura chatting about Jenna's wedding.
I mentioned in a previous post on my blog Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis that the First Lady's severe condemnation of the Myanmar government mixed in with the offer for aid yesterday surely seemed bent on forcing Myanmar to reject it.
Those who depend on legacy news media for information are not likely to know that the White House yesterday risked derailing international efforts to provide help to the people of Myanmar. After a cyclone struck the southeast Asian nation on Saturday, tens of thousands are reported dead or missing, and many thousands more are without food, water, shelter and medical care.
One must look hard to find the full text of comments made at a White House news conference held Monday by Mrs. Bush. But, do look. In their entirety, the comments display a callousness toward Myanmar's situation, more than a little hypocrisy, and appear to deliberately antagonize the Myanmar government at a time when the UN and other international entities were conducting delicate negotiations to persuade reluctant Myanmar officials to let disaster relief teams into their country. Thus, the White House risked provoking Myanmar's junta into rejecting ALL external assistance offered by other countries and relief organizations.
Yesterday Laura Bush was at the White House giving a press conference on the tragedy in Myanmar. Everything appears on the level until the very end when the focus shifts to the details of Jenna's upcoming wedding plans.
The first lady appears to totally lose focus on the crisis at hand and is all smiles about the blooming flowers and limestone etc. and to be fair its also the fault of the press for allowing this highly insensitive shift to occur.
The question is - is this something similar to when she said "nobody suffers from the war more than we do (she and her husband)" and a window into the psyche of the Bush's? Or is this just a mental lapse? Was it the fault of the Press?
The. Chutzpah. Is. Unbelievable.: In a press conference yesterday, Laura Bush took the Myanmar junta to task for failing to prepare its citizens for the recent cyclone (est. death toll: 10,000) and for spurning foreign aid.
Asked whether she worried that US aid might not reach Myanmar's people, Laura Bush replied: "I'm worried that they won't even accept US aid."...
Gee--it's too bad the junta couldn't learn how to lead from Boy Bush's government:
In one exchange, State Department officials anguished over whether to tell Italy that its shipments of medicine, gauze, and other medical supplies spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005, and were destroyed....And while television sets worldwide showed images of New Orleans residents begging to be rescued from rooftops as floodwaters rose, U.S. officials turned down countless offers of allied troops and search-and-rescue teams. The most common responses: "sent letter of thanks" and "will keep offer on hand," the new documents show.
Many Dems are too caught up in the heat of the moment to appreciate how destructive Hillary Clinton's presidential run has been, and so it's instructive to use a hypothetical to help define the issue. What would have happened if Bess Truman had decided to run for president eight years after her husband, Harry Truman, left office?
With her presidential wedding just weeks away, First Daughter Jenna Bush will once again be the subject of celebrity and political gossip alike. Just a few years ago, the bar-hopping the Bush twin seemed destined to follow in her father's footsteps as a Republican Party Animal. As it turns out, on abstinence policy and the election of John McCain - two issues near and dear to her GOP father's heart - Jenna Bush may not be much of a Republican at all.
took questions. And, the press had their chance to ask questions. Some were quite serious, quite on target.
