Flag burning
- From: pfeiffersoro@xxxxxxxx
- Date: 30 Jun 2006 05:19:24 -0700
The LA Times thinks Hillary is wrong to support an anti-flag burning
Amendment. Wimps! We need to authorize the police to shoot on sight
anybody who defaces or defames the American flag (or, for that matter,
the Liberian one since the average cop can't count from 1 to 50 or from
11 to 13). We need to build a Wall around America and KEEP FOREIGNERS
OUT! As a later step to keep foreigners from stealing America, seal off
the USA from the outside: close down the UN and close the international
airports. Then we could have a domestic Crusade: amend the Constitution
to make this the Christian nation it was intended to be, and force
everybody to conver or leave. The Inquisition, criticized as it
sometimes is, worked like a dream.
----------
Don't be a hack, Hillary
Sen. Clinton's calculations on Iraq and flag burning leave Americans
cold.
By Arianna Huffington, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON is the editor of
huffingtonpost.com.
LA Times
June 29, 2006
TUESDAY'S SENATE debate on flag desecration was emblematic of Hillary
Rodham Clinton's ongoing attempt to rebrand herself as a
red-state-friendly Dem by supporting a bill that would have
criminalized flag descrcration, while still holding on to her liberal
bonafides by voting against the Constitutional amendment banning that
desecration. It was eating your patriotism cake and having it too.
Even if Clinton doesn't know what she stands for any longer, doesn't
she at least read the polls? The latest analysis by Democracy Corps, a
Democratic polling firm, couldn't be clearer: Democrats need to draw
sharp distinctions between themselves and the GOP - especially by
stressing their opposition to the war in Iraq. Oh, that's right,
Clinton doesn't see things that way. She wants to have it both ways on
Iraq too.
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"I do not think," she said earlier this month at a Take Back America
conference, , "it is a smart strategy for the president to continue
with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough
pressure on the new Iraqi government. Nor do I think it is smart
strategy to set a date certain."
Is that not the second coming of "I voted for it before I voted against
it"?
And will Democratic leaders ever learn that this kind of
have-it-both-ways hedging on matters of war and security is electoral
death? Voters have an instinctive aversion to it. Something in their
guts tells them that if a leader can't take a stand and clearly speak
her heartfelt beliefs on such life-and-death matters, she won't be able
to keep us safe.
When it comes to their security, people don't want finely parsed
calculations, they want confidence. Even misguided confidence like
President Bush's.
Listening to Clinton, you could almost smell the cold calculation
hanging in the air, like the smell of gunpowder after a shooting. This
issue and others - including the escalated rhetoric on abortion -
are part and parcel of a move toward a mythical center to position
herself for a run for the presidency in 2008.
On Iraq, Clinton has told confidants that, as a woman, she cannot take
a position against the war and still be electable. The debate over
Iraq, Clinton says, is "a difficult conversation." Difficult for whom?
The American people have already had this difficult conversation, and
62% of them in a recent poll disapproved of Bush's handling of the war.
The Democrats don't even have to lead. They just have to follow the
people.
The Democratic leaders who still believe that the way to get elected is
to be hawkish on the war, support the flag-burning bill, share friendly
photo ops with Newt Gingrich, Bill Frist and Rick Santorum and be feted
by Rupert Murdoch should keep in mind that the president, who shares
that belief, has a 36% approval rating.
But the Democrats have utterly failed to take advantage of Bush being
down - and he's starting to climb off the deck, gaining some traction
following the killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi and the recent presidential
photo-op visit to Baghdad.
Instead of giving the president breathing room, Democrats need to keep
pounding him where he's most vulnerable - Iraq - and do it 24/7.
And the only way to do this is by providing a clear alternative stand
on the war.
During her Take Back America speech, Clinton made much of her new
"Count Every Vote" bill, which is designed to fix many of the flaws in
our voting system - an initiative that is critically important and
that I wholeheartedly endorse. But the GOP's failures over the last six
years are so overwhelming and so tragic that unless the Democrats shoot
themselves in the face - i.e., fail to make the Iraq war and how it
has made America less safe the dominant issue in 2006 - they should
be able to win in a landslide victory that not even Katherine Harris,
Ken Blackwell and Diebold can steal.
But that won't happen if Democrats keep getting dazzled by Clinton's
star power and allow it to blind them to how fatal her calculating,
inauthentic stance on Iraq would be.
No wonder she'd rather have attention focused on her aisle-straddling
on a nonissue such as protecting the American flag. Even proponents of
the amendment admit that there have been just four incidents of flag
desecration this year and about 50 in the last five years. But for
Clinton, it's stars, stripes and triangulation forever.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-huffington29jun29,0,1354816.story
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