David Rodeback's BlogLocal Politics and Culture, National Politics,
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005Things They're SayingGeorge Will, who can turn a phrase with the best of them, said this in The Washington Post: "You can no more embarrass a senator than you can a sofa." The context almost doesn't matter, does it? Could be the narcissist-Inquisitors on the Senate Judiciary Committee, or one of the Louisiana Senators talking about Katrina's aftermath with brain fully disengaged, or someone and something else entirely. Speaking of Senators speaking, Barack Obama (D-Illinois), whom I recently praised for giving a great speech, is back in the general neighborhood of the Democratic National Committee's talking points now. There are numerous reports of him charging the President with inadequate empathy for Katrina's victims and criticizing the government's "historic indifference" and "passive indifference" to the plight of the nation's poor. It's "as bad as active malice," he says. By the way, if you need a number to measure our national indifference to poverty, there's the six or seven trillion dollars we've spent to combat poverty in the last 40 years or so, since President Johnson declared war on poverty in 1964. I wish someone would take pity on me and shower me with just a tiny fraction of such indifference! Actually, I said he's back near the Un-Democratic Party's talking points, but he's noticeably less knee-jerk, less hysterical, and more sensible than the talking points themselves, especially if you're willing to give him a pass on the six-billion-dollar indifference thing. By the current opposition standard, he's too willing to point fingers at big government, local government, the Democrats themselves - in short, a lot of folks besides the President Bush, the DNC's version of Voldemort. Here's one mostly favorable account, by Clarence Page, who typically is well worth reading. I resisted the temptation to blog on American Fork matters today, in the wake of last evening's City Council meeting, tonight's meeting of the Nuisance Abatement Committee (of which I am a member), and so forth. I don't think I'll be able to resist tomorrow, though, so stay tuned.
Copyright 2005 by David Rodeback. |
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