22 July 2005
Spectator
The View from Here
Tom Reynolds gets the manure detail
Tom Reynolds jumped in the lame-assed defense of Karl Rove last week by calling former Ambassador Joe Wilson "a fraud." We can forgive Reynolds, of course. He's merely doing the bidding of the master of the House, Tom DeLay. The Republicans all got their marching orders last week as the white House started to circle the wagons around the embattled serial character assassin in the White House. So they are pulling the same crap we saw with the "shifty boat veterans for Bush:" when you can't stand your guy's record to the smell test, throw manure at the other guy.
So while it is not surprising that Reynolds buried his hands up to his wrists in cow crap, it is sad. Reynolds calling someone else a fraud takes a lot of guts, even for a guy who, as a state assemblyman, had no hesitation to pass a state law to make himself eligible for a state pension he didn't earn. Reynolds is the guy (the "fraud?") who is now asking that Niagara Falls Air Base escape the BRAC Commission ax after he was loony enough to vote for a bill that moved the BRAC recommendations up a couple of years. None of massive effort being poured into the fight to keep Niagara Falls open was even necessary if Reynolds had taken five minutes to ask the implications of fast-tracking BRAC on his district. Or maybe Reynolds was simply told not to ask questions.GOP continues screwing veterans
That's bad enough but if you need evidence of a real fraud, it was all spelled out in the Sunday Buffalo News. The story was buried on page 7 but is did make the top of the fold. It reminded us: "Veterans funding shortfall embarrasses GOP." The story tells the said saga of a government so deeply estranged from the truth that is now punishes the truthful in their own party. Last year, the Republican chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee told DeLay and Dennis Hastert that the the bill before the House to fund the Veterans Administration was about $2.5 billion short. You all remember veterans, right? They are the men and women who get sent off to fight the phony wars conjured up the George Bushes of the world - guys who never fought themselves but can find a lot of bullshit reasons for another generation to fight. Well, after speaking up, the House leadership, of which we sadly count Tom Reynolds, did the right thing. They fired the subcommittee chairman and kicked some other guys off it completely. And these are Republicans getting that kind of treatment.
Well, the chickens have come home to roost. The VA Secretary, a former GOP National Chairman (see? I don't make this stuff up about musical chairs), said he's short a billion or so dollars to care for they who have borne the weight of battle. Delay's spokesman said he was confident that "every veteran will receive the coverage they need."
Keep in mind while these guys are calling Joe Wilson "a fraud," they screwed veterans, they screwed veterans advocates, and they have yet to arm up the soldiers and marines they sent to the fraudulent war in Iraq. Soldiers till die because their vehicles are not armored. There is a shortage of bullets. (Don't believe me? See a re-run of "60 Minutes" from 7/17.) The troops are equipped with walkie-talkies bought from Radio Shack because the military doesn't have enough of the real stuff. And in response we get the outrageous spewing of Donald Rumsfeld about "going to war with the Army we have." How come everyone in America has a "Support the Troops" magnet but no one has the balls to ask how the government is supporting the troops.WBFO's Limbaugh "Get Hillary" knock-off
There is some Rush Limbaugh knock-off who does a monthly commentary on WBFO. In his most recent psalm in praise of all things Bush and conservative, this jackass used the base closing in Niagara Falls as an opportunity to spit some venom Hillary Clinton's way. This Bill O'Reilly wanna-be said that Clinton is wrong to use civilian employment at the air base as a straw man in the effort to keep the base open. The argument was that it is not the government's job to create jobs. Huh? You want to tell that to Sen. Ted Stevens from Alaska or to Robert Byrd of West Virginia or Tom DeLay? Entire regional economies have been nurtured by defensive spending; just not here in Western New York. The late Pat Moynihan used to publish a report each year revealing how much New York State got short changed in what it gave to the feds and what it got back. One of the great shortfalls was in the area of defense spending. Precious little of it came the way of New York. The lion's share of it went to places like St. Louis and Pascagoula MS and Seattle. The Republican National Committee apparently left those talking points out of what they sent to their lackeys around the country. The message now is simply "Get Hillary!"
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.