Bush immortalizes his legacy in two simple words: So What?
Somebody else is talking about G.W.’s legacy – and if you missed it on World News last night, you’ve got to read this transcript of Martha Raddatz’s interview with him. His admission to Raddatz that al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded that country kept me up last night with a sick-to-my-stomach kind of anger.
He sums up his own legacy, the Bush legacy, in two simple words: So what??
I made my thoughts clear on this mofo back in 2006 — you can read about it in my tiny treatise on the difference between disloyalty and dissent — the only column the Pelican Press ever refused to run in my Reality Chick column.
The difference between disloyalty and dissent
This work was written in October 2006 — it’s the only column the Pelican Press ever refused to run in my Reality Chick column space, though they did run a slightly altered version in the op/ed pages.
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Friday, September 27, 2006. High Tea with Sandy and Vern Buchanan. At the Ritz. With extra-special guest, Laura Bush.
“Responsible candidates understand that the men and women of our military are risking their lives for us overseas, and that we must conduct our debate here at home in a way that does not jeopardize our troops in harm’s way,” the First Lady said. She also stated that “People around the world are listening to these discussions.”
Allow me to translate:
“Unless you want to look like a disloyal, anti-American, you better not speak out against the war – and if you do, American soldiers will die and the responsibility will be yours.” (more…)
Dodging shoes? Surely a bit better than dodging bullets.
I don’t know, geez, I felt a little sorry for George Bush. For about a nano-second.
Dodging shoes? Not so much fun as you close down your faux-presidency.
But I guess it’s a helluva lot more fun than dodging bullets without a Kevlar vest and getting up close and personal with a roadside bomb while riding in under-armored, frickin’ soft-topped Humvee. Which is the position he put American soldiers in when he launched a preemptive war with an unprepared military.
I thought I was over my anger with G.W. After all, he’s so passé.
But, unfortunately, his déclassé lives on.
Read Bush League to get my thoughts from 2006 on the Bush legacy of déclassé.
Bush League
This column first appeared in 2006.
An article in last Sunday’s New YorkTimes on money and class issues in America got me thinking.
Our country’s class systems used to run along lines that while certainly financially based were also at least partially skewed by education, lineage, a good backhand, and knowing how to spoon soup from a bowl.
Slowly, the use of class as a defining social stratum has eroded and while that may be a good thing, we’ve lost the concept of personal “class” along with it. (more…)
City still offering same-sex benefits despite Amendment Two
(This piece ran in the Pelican Press newspaper November 19, 2008.)
Despite the success of Amendment Two in the Nov. 4 election, the City of Sarasota is continuing to offer a domestic-partner plan that would provide health insurance benefits, similar to those offered to spouses, to the live-in partners of city employees.
The amendment states that “no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized” in the State of Florida, but that’s not stopping the City of Sarasota.
Given the ambiguity of the “substantial equivalent thereof” portion of the amendment, City Commissioner Ken Shelin acknowledges that potential problems could ensue.
“I suppose we won’t really know until somebody attempts to file a lawsuit to prevent some public entity from providing those benefits,” Shelin told the Pelican Press.
But, he said a week after the election, the city “is in the open season for signing up for health care benefits right now, and we’re going to move forward with it until somebody stops us.”
Shelin, who championed the domestic-partner benefit plan when it was up for vote before the city commissioners in September, says he does not think domestic partnerships qualify as “substantial equivalents” to marriages.
“I think they are something less than marriage,” he explained;
therefore, he doesn’t feel the city is violating any aspect of the new amendment. “I’m hoping [the amendment] doesn’t have any impact,” Shelin said. “The proponents have repeatedly said it wouldn’t … so I’m hoping they’re right.”
City Attorney Robert Fournier acknowledges that that the passing of Amendment Two may eventually affect the city’s ability to continue to offer health benefits to domestic partners.
“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion or an absolute certainty,” he said, but referring to the language about substantial equivalents to marriage, he predicts, “That’s going to be the part that the courts are probably going to be called upon to interpret.”
In the meantime, Fournier says, the city will continue to offer health benefits to employees with qualifying domestic partnerships. However, he added, “We may take a second look” at the wording in the current Declaration of Domestic Partnership the city requires of unmarried employees seeking benefits.
According to Kurt Hoverter, the city’s Human Resources director, the benefit plan is available to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples who live together in a committed relationship but aren’t married. To be eligible for the benefit, Hoverter says the couple must provide a signed and notarized Declaration of Domestic Partnership, attesting to, among other things, that they:
• “have mutually agreed to be in a committed, serious, long-term relationship indefinitely with each other”;
• “are jointly responsible for each other’s basic food, shelter, common necessities of life and welfare”;
• “share our primary residence with each other”;
• “share and coordinate financial responsibilities”;
• “consider ourselves to be a member of the immediate family of each other.”
Hoverter says that though the city has had a number of employees inquire about the domestic partner benefits, few have actually signed up. “People were waiting to see what happened with Amendment Two,” Hoverter said, adding, “We still don’t know how this is going to play out.”
Making marriage moral … really moral, not fake moral
I’m passionate about the rights of same-sex couples to marry! Here’s a column I wrote in December 2007 — but it’s doubly important now. Please look into your heart and vote NO on Amendment 2.
Last week, sponsors of a proposal to ban gay marriage in Florida announced that they’ve secured enough signatures to put the question to voters on the 2008 ballot.
Don’t you think the next item on the agenda will be to define precisely who and what qualifies as a “man” or “woman?” Because, after all, once a law exists, someone has to enforce it, and to do that you have to define its components. There’s so much variation in chromosomal make-ups, just how in the heck do they plan on preventing intragender marriage?
I mean, really, with all the mustaches darkening the upper lips of women and all those man-breasts flopping around under golf shirts – just who among us is really “all man” or “all woman?” (more…)
Pounding out the dents in democracy
As if last year’s blow to Sarasota’s election integrity — found in the August 15th 2006 letter from ES&S (Election Systems & Software) that was received but not disclosed to the public by the local Office of Elections — wasn’t enough, this year we have an entire Senate race missing from the absentee ballots mailed to some Sarasota County voters. Even though the number of erroneous ballots was relatively small and action was taken to rectify the situation, this recent blunder by Kathy Dent’s office — which again, was not made public by that office — rips the scab off the wound of the 2006 Jennings/Buchanan voting scandal. (more…)
Vox populi
Voting, Lyndon Johnson said, is the “first duty of democracy.”
I’d go one step beyond LBJ and say that voting is the first duty to one’s self, and an absolute imperative in duty toward family and community.
And for those among you who, perhaps as discontented as I with the current state of intellect and integrity among so many of the candidates, are thinking of not voting – all I ask is that you think again. (more…)
Morgan’s my man (for State Senate)
At a lunch meeting today with a prospective client, I mentioned Morgan Bentley — only I referred to him as Morgan Stanley! Good grief; at least the client only razzed me slightly.
Then, tonight, I was sitting outside on my stoop with my cat, Boomerang, on his cute little red leash. Covered in cat hair (Boomer and I had a tussle over putting on the leash) and dressed in my “cleaning the house” duds, I sat on the stoop with the door open, half-listening to the nightly news and enjoying the not-very-cool breeze.
Suddenly, a tall man walked up my driveway and startled me out of my reverie. (more…)
