Sen. Jim Webb's "Post-9/11 GI Bill" passed the Senate today by a veto-proof majority. The bill, inserted into a war spending bill, would provide higher education funding to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the same way that the GI Bill provided higher education for World War II veterans.

President Bush -- who alleges that he supports the troops, and yet who clearly does not support the troops (despite having given up golf to show his solidarity with them!), is against the legislation. Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain is also against the legislation. McCain's reasoning? If you give enlisted men and women the choice of staying in the military or going to college for free, guess what: they'd rather go to college. This is offensive to the requirements of President Bush's ongoing War on Terr', which needs meat to throw at the nondescript enemy. Craig Newmark (of Craigslist fame) links to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing that enlistment would not decrease if veterans were given better access to higher education.

President Bush, for his part, is against the legislation because he thinks it would cost too much. The Veterans Administration claims the new bill would cost $5.4 billion per year. How much is that? According to the Congressional Budget Office, the War on Terror -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and other operations -- cost over $500 billion as of 2007. Spread over six years, that's roughly $83 billion per year. The president thinks that "too much" is 6.5% of the cost of the War on Terror annually. Here's another number: $50 billion. That's how much money may have been wasted in just the Iraq War.

What would President Bush do if he were faced with passing this legislation or vetoing it? The Republican P.R. machine is very talented, but it would hard for them to argue that educating war veterans is bad for our country. Bush may just take the weasel ground and attempt a pocket veto like he did over the holidays. He doesn't want to sign the bill because he doesn't want his terrorist-meat to leave him. On the other hand, he doesn't want to veto the bill because that would make it seem as though he didn't care about the troops (which he doesn't, unless "empty words" count as supporting the troops).

Posted by Mark at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro still blames sexism for Hillary Clinton's loss.

Hard to believe, considering that Hillary won big time -- in fact, by the biggest margins of any of her states -- in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas, Appalachian states in which sexism and "traditional roles" for women are still very much the norm.

Also hard to believe because the most educated, and ostensibly least sexist (or any ist), section of America voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.

Of course, Ferraro is unable to cite any instances of Barack Obama being sexist toward Hillary Clinton. In Ferraro's mind, sexism is the only clear answer. Clinton's campaign couldn't possibly have failed because people want Obama to be president more than they want her to be president.

Posted by Mark at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Armchair historian George W. Bush last week, in an act of terrifying tactlessness, accused "some" in the United States of wanting to "appease" terrorists the same way that Neville Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler. His act is tactless, said Barack Obama, because he criticized Americans in front of a foreign delegation, and all because those "some" Americans disagreed with his foreign policy. But, nevertheless, it may have been valid because his speech was on foreign policy ...

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Whoops! Turns out he was giving a speech as part of the celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary. Happy birthday, Israel! Don't you just hate Democrats?

Chris Matthews of all people took the time to point out to a stupid guest why Bush's immediate distaste for "appeasement" doesn't make sense: the act that makes historians slap their palms to their foreheads is not that Chamberlain met with Hitler -- for, at the time, Hitler had not yet demonstrated his desire for world domination; the problems in Germany were external -- but rather that they gave him Czechoslovakia in return for the promise that he wouldn't go after any other countries. Hitler alleged that Germany had a legitimate claim to the Rhineland in Czechoslovakia. The other European leaders, still stinging from World War I, which is a more horrible war than you've been taught in history class, wanted to avoid another war at any cost.

Talking to leaders was, before 2001, how diplomacy got done. For Bush's analogy to make sense, his political enemies would have had to suggest that they let the other Arab states destroy Israel. To my knowledge, no Democrat has suggested this.

It could be that Bush, with his college-freshman mind, had heard the word "appeasement" in a class somewhere but didn't fully understand what it meant. Or, more sinisterly, he knows full well what it means, and knows that the Israelis know that, too. Perhaps he was sending a code to the Israeli delegation, saying, "If the United States elects a Democrat to the presidency, that person will stand idly by while Iran, Syria, and Lebanon destroy you."

Sadly, though, I don't think Bush is that smart. I think, as Chris Matthews has suggested, he's using the word "appeasement" as a buzz-word in the same way as every other pundit, including right-wing talk show host Kevin James. James was asked two dozen times by Matthews what Chamberlain did that was appeasing. For five minutes, James insisted that "we all know" what he did, and that "he was an appeaser." Finally, James admitted that he didn't actually know what Chamberlain did that was "appeasing."

And still, the election in 2008 will be almost a tie. How can James and others get away with this and have people believe them?

Posted by Mark at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)