September 2008

Dick Cheney Decides Georgia Will Be In NATO

Rest of NATO heard suggesting he go hunting witht he Georgian President.

“Georgia will be in our alliance,” Cheney told reporters while standing alongside Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, whose pro-Western government has sought to join NATO despite Russian opposition.

Angry Russian officials have repeatedly said U.S. military aid was instrumental in emboldening Georgia to try to retake South Ossetia by force on Aug. 7. The attack sparked five days of fighting and resulted in Russian forces driving into South Ossetia and on into Georgia.

While discouraging Russian expansionism is good policy, it’s a little hard to see how the US has a strategic interest worth protecting with NATO defense responsibilities.  It’s dangerous and nuts and beyond the scope of US National Interest to provide that kind of guarantee.

Daily Dolt: The Illinois Review

It posts a big ‘ole article by the Pharmacists for Life group talking about how normal the Palin family is.  In general, I don’t find the family terribly remarkable so I have no big complaint with the thesis, but having a group like Pharmacists for Life call you normal should be disconcerting.
Besides being anti-contraception, they have a particularly offensive web site with this kind of stuff:

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And, of course, they call Blagojevich Slobodan.  Rod is many things, but genocidal dictator is not one of those things.

Other Things The Base Loved

Other reactions


National Journal’s CongressDaily
August 18, 1992

Although the delegates appeared to love Pat Buchanan’s takeno-prisoners speech Monday night, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said today he believes waging cultural war using social issues like abortion and homosexuality is a political loser. “I don’t think it appears to be a winning issue for the president,” Lugar told reporters. “It’s not an appealing message.” When asked about the GOP attacks this week on Hillary Clinton, Lugar said, “I wish they would cut it out.” Lugar suggested the Republicans should instead run on a strong foreign policy and strategies for economic growth. Asked about Bill Clinton’s foreign policy speech last week, Lugar moved further into the sbipartisanship arena. “I thought it was a good speech,” he said. But he also emphasized Bush’s greater experience in the foreign policy area.

CNNAugust 20, 1992
NEWS

SESNO: Let me ask you one other question here. It is not just Pat Buchanan who’s had these very critical comments. We’ve also heard from Pat Robertson, who said that Bill Clinton was going to give gays, or suggested that gays would become ‘a privileged minority.’ Marilyn Quayle took a shot at Hillary Clinton, and Newt Gingrich said that Democrats, for example, ‘despised American values.’ This has been a drumbeat now, or at least with some, and some suggest that this indicates that George Bush is not running – or this party is not running – on its record so much as it’s running against others, groups, persons.

Sometimes the reaction of the base, not so good of a measure of how a speech goes.