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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Is there ANYTHING AT ALL the Republicans haven't rendered completely FUBAR?
Posted by Jill | 2:53 PM
I just got back from a pilgrimage to Trader Joe's and Westwood Feed Co. in search of wheat-free and wheat gluten-free dry kibble for Queen Jenny and Maggie the Great White Squirrel Huntress. I have an unopened bag of Purine One Hairball and Healthy Weight formula, but I'll be damned if I'll give it to them after following the ever-spreading tainted pet food scandal on PatConnection.com. Between E Coli-tainted spinach, tainted peanut butter, mad cow disease, and now this, we are seeing in action the results of the Republican "make government small enough to drown in a bathtub" doctrine. This is what happens when you decide that regulation is bad and we should let market forces determine outcomes and when the FDA acts to protect corporations instead of people. Tell the over 2,600 people who have reported their pets dead from kidney failure from eating food containing wheat gluten imported from China that contains PLASTIC, for God's sake, about market forces and how we can't allow companies to be hurt by bad press.

Republican corporatism isn't new, it's just that after six years of an all-Republican government, we're seeing what laissez-faire corporatism looks like. But food safety, health care, and the middle-class job market aren't all that's been destroyed by this bunch; it looks like they fucked up even where they're supposed to be strongest -- national defense:


Two Afghanistan experts painted a sobering picture of the conditions there yesterday, arguing support among Afghans for NATO forces is plummeting, the U.S.-driven policy of poppy eradication is wrongheaded, and the war might not be winnable in its present form.

U.S. scholar Barnett Rubin and Gordon Smith, Canada's former ambassador to NATO, delivered their withering comments to a Commons committee only days after Canada's top military commander, Gen. Rick Hillier, touted progress being made there.

Hillier, the chief of defence staff, this week predicted Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan will soon see a rise in attacks from the Taliban. But he insisted on using the term "surge" rather than "offensive."

He also noted many Afghans are moving back into their homes in districts west of Kandahar following a Canadian-led NATO offensive last fall.

But Rubin, who has been to Afghanistan 29 times over more than two decades, said yesterday many Afghans are growing frustrated with the pace of Western efforts to stabilize the country.

"They're not at all happy. Support for both the international presence and the government has plummeted in the past year or so," he told the foreign affairs committee.

He said Afghans aren't seeing the results of promises by the United States and NATO, which took over the mission in 2003, to increase security, establish democracy and improve the economy. "The main complaint that I hear from Afghans is ... that we haven't delivered what they think we promised."


Perhaps it's because George W. Bush got bored with Afghanistan and needed the shiny new bauble of Iraq to hang on his codpiece. And now Afghanistan is about to be turned back over to the Taliban (where presumably we will once again give them a shitload of money for so-called poppy eradication).

So five and one-half years after the 9/11/01 attacks, we are about to lose Afghanistan, and we are bogged down in Iraq in perpetuity. This is a country that defeated Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese Emperoro in less time....and we can't handle Afghanistan and Iraq?

So once again, I ask: can anyone name ANYTHING this bunch hasn't completely fucked up?

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