Let's talk politics

Since I've not had time to post much all week I figured I'd combine a few political topics into one post.

First off is Bush is going on vacation again. While the majority of the country can't afford to take vacation, if they even get paid time off, he's off for yet another extended period. Considering all the issues going on this country that desperately need to be addressed, the last thing he should be worrying about is taking a vacation. The Iraqi parliament has taken the entire month off and now Bush is going out as well. Is this what supporting the troops is supposed to be about?

What a difference a decade can make. This video shows very nicely how Cheney, and the entire Bush administration, will say whatever they think will benefit them the most at the time. So in other words, Cheney was against the war before he was for it…?

That big report on Iraq that's coming out in September that's supposed to be used to determine if the "surge" is working…? Turns out it's going to be written by the White House itself instead of by the general in charge of the war. From the LA Times:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

Um, does anyone in Congress see a problem with this? The same people who need the report to show glowing progress are the ones writing the report. What are the chances that the report will be full of only positive results, descriptions of how well the surge is working, and why we should stay? With the lives of over a hundred thousand US troops and the entire population of Iraq riding on this report, maybe Congress needs to insist on a report from a third party.

And on a positive note, in Oregon the movement to have the state's anti-discrimination and domestic partner law repealed are nowhere near getting enough signatures. Score one for the good guys. In a similar vein, a majority of voters in New Jersey favor equal marriage rights for same-sex couples as opposed to civil unions that are separate but equal. It's nice to see some areas of the country are actually waking up to the fact that the only thing threatening heterosexual marriages is heterosexuals. The bigger point here is that this is the way to package the debate: we should stop referring to "same sex marriage" and only refer to it as "marriage equality". In the end, that's what it's about...equal marriage rights regardless of whether it's two men, two woman, or a man and a woman. This poll and others show that the term "marriage equality" is something that a lot more people can get behind since equal rights is something more people than not can identify with.