The Plame Game
Writing by treason on Friday, 28 of October , 2005 at 4:17 pm
Speaking of wanting something to be over so we can focus on something else, when is this going to be over so we can focus on something else? I don’t want to get into a discussion of Joseph Wilson because he’s taking up more than enough space elsewhere. And because he has his own credibility issues and soon his fifteen minutes will pass.
I’m disappointed that Lewis Libby has resigned and no one has yet heard if Valerie Plame was actually outed by anyone other than her spouse. If memory serves, Hillary and Bill were unable to recall, recount, remember and got their facts mixed up and I was skeptical. Now Libby has gotten the facts wrong about conversations that happened two years ago and the media and Democrats want him to suffer.
I’m sympathetic, not just because I’m partisan and because I really like the man, but because I got up to make coffee this morning and couldn’t find it. I had to stand there at the kitchen counter and try to remember what had happened twenty-four hours earlier. I had beans and a grinder. There was a plastic container. T was in the kitchen getting breakfast for the dogs. He was a witness. I know there was grinding. I put the ground coffee in the container. Where is it if it’s not in the refrigerator?
I tell you, I was at a loss. I’d been distracted because one of the dogs wasn’t showing interest in breakfast and that only means illness. I must have been preoccupied with that and spaced the coffee. No, I’m sure I ground the beans. Retrace steps. Open cabinet where I have never ever stored coffee. Ah, there it is.
Well, I am at that age. But what got me really thinking about this Libby thing is what happened later. We took the dogs for a walk and stopped at the vet to weigh them. T took one in, then the other. Maybe three minutes passed. I asked how much our male dog weighed and T hesitated. He’s not at that age and he’d already forgotten something that happened three minutes earlier. If I’d asked him what the dog weighed three years ago, I would have expected some hesitation, but three minutes?
The Democrats have pretty much blamed September 11 on the Right because they think if Bill Clinton hadn’t been hounded over the little matter of perjury, he would have been able to do his job and concentrate on terrorism. It’s a stretch, but here we are in the middle of a war on terror and Lewis Libby is a key player, and now he’s gone. Dems aren’t too concerned about any security issues that might stem from pulling a perfectly capable employee out of his job.
But here I must agree with the Dems’ complaint about focusing on some seemingly unimportant matters while bigger issues are forming. We get bogged down by stuff like this. When I heard that Harriet Miers went to the White House Wednesday night to talk to the president about withdrawing her name, two things bothered me. One was that I’d just heard that there was going to be a revised questionnaire sent to the committee - the same time she was jumping ship? But worse, she was going to the White House to meet with the president just as Game 4 of the World Series was getting underway. Now maybe I shouldn’t assume that George and Laura (and Barney and Miss Beazley) were settling in to watch, but I can’t help think that they would be. And I’d think Harriet would be watching, too. How often does Texas send a team to the series?
I can dwell on something like this for weeks. And while I’m dwelling on this, terrible things could be happening. Houseplants could be dying from lack of water. The toilet could be leaking and rotting the woodwork in the guest bathroom. My tires might be going flat. The list goes on.
We focus on 2000 soldiers dying in Iraq but don’t care that 80,000 people in Pakistan were buried under rubble or 275,000 were washed away by a big ass wave last Christmas. We wring our hands over Katrina but, as far as anyone knows, Wilma was just Fred’s wife. It doesn’t take much to take our eye off the ball. And when you take your eye off the ball, what happens? You generally get beaned.
Maybe we tend to focus on one thing. My friend Louise admits to being a one issue voter. For her it’s abortion. She’s Catholic and pro-life, so she will vote for any candidate who is. She voted for George Bush. He might not reform Social Security before he leaves office, but that’s not going to make her regret voting for him. He’s where she wants him to be on her particular issue. I’m not a one issue voter, but I do like to keep my major issues focused on two or three areas. When the Republicans asked me to tell them what issues I thought were most important and presented me with a long list to choose from, I felt I had to narrow them down to three. I call them “the three Ts.”
Tax reform has always been a big one for me. I have been dreaming about a fair or flat tax for as long as I can remember and hoping for major tax reform for as long as I’ve been paying taxes. And that’s forever. At least it feels that way.
One of the things I always liked about Dan Quayle is that he liked to talk about tort reform. For me, the term tort reform encompasses a whole slew of things that generally make me dislike lawyers. Senseless regulations, ridiculous lawsuits, bizarre rulings, bad judges, SCOTUS, ACLU, malpractice - the list is long.
The third, and most important issue, is terrorism. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if I’m dealing with taxation without representation or that the justice system is depriving me of justice if my city has been blown off the map. People look at me like I’m weird and paranoid for worrying about terrorism because I don’t live in New York, Los Angeles, or D.C. Those who live in my state are convinced that terrorism won’t affect them because no terrorist would want to bother with us. These are the same people who felt that what happened on September 11 really didn’t have too much effect on them because it was something that happened in New York. And D.C. And that other place. That P state.
I took my mother to the doctor yesterday and got into a conversation with a WW II vet. He asked me if I was a Liberal. I said no. Good, he said. We can talk. Just as he was asking for my opinion about Iraq, they called my mother’s name. I think I would have told him that I feel we have to get Iraq up to speed so they can help us straighten out Iran. While we’re here celebrating Fitzmas, the president of Iran is calling for Israel to be wiped off the planet. Iranians are chanting “Death to America” and burning American and Israeli flags. And the U.N. is virtually silent.
At least Tony Blair seems bothered by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s desire to annihilate Jews. I’d like to thank him for noticing and pointing out that this is unacceptable. Anyone else care to speak up?
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