Happy Veterans Day from Sen. Norm Coleman
How much more difficult will it be for Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) to claim he supports the troops when he voted to strip important VA funding from the Labor, Health and Human Services bill 3 days before Veterans day. The timing couldn't be worse for yet another flip-flop. He changed his position after his concrete shoes, President Bush, vowed to veto the bill.
(The Hill)
Norm has been trying to moderate his right-wing voting habits lately, but returns to form with this vote. The list of vet issues that Norm has voted against increases. Wounded vets are becoming more and more inconvenient for Republicans like Norm. He likes to go on "dog and pony" shows in Iraq that are completely staged by Army PR flacks to show his support. Norm likes to talk about the progress the military is making in Iraq while expressing his deep concern about the mission, but he never recognizes that the troops, the real men and women who server our country, are maimed and killed every day because he defies the will of Minnesotans and votes to continue President Bush's war.
His support of the troops is limited to "dog and pony" shows and repeating the latest version of the Orwellian mantra that we need to stay the course in Iraq. In his efforts to pull the blinders over Minnesotan's with Norm-speakTM, he issues press releases like the one below. He hints that things aren't going well (reality does creep in occasionally), but still refuses to do anything other than what Bush wants.
Despite the sense of optimism brought by the progress of our military, it's clear the Iraqi government has failed to meet the benchmarks needed to achieve political reconciliation. In his testimony Ambassador Crocker maintained that political progress is being made, albeit slowly. However, we can no longer be satisfied by the slow pace at which Prime Minister al-Maliki is working to meet these objectives. Without political reconciliation, long term stability in Iraq cannot begin to take hold.
For this reason, I am pleased that General Petraeus plans to make an initial troop reduction of about 5,000 troops by Christmas. As I have previously noted, such a reduction should send a strong message to the Iraqi leadership that it must do its part to advance political reconciliation immediately. We must also implement a diplomatic surge, particularly with Sunni Arab nations in the region who can work with Iraqi Sunni areas to aid our efforts in fighting al-Qaeda. The United Nations must also play a greater role in order to curb Iran's efforts to destabilize Iraq.
The reality is that our national security interests demand that we have a long term presence in the region – but not caught in the crosshairs on sectarian violence. Our mission must change, with the ultimate goal of having the Iraqis assume responsibility for their security and political environment.
[emphasis mine]
(Norm's statement on Iraq from 9/10/07)
Now Norm refuses to join the adults in Congress to increase the VA funding. The increase is to deal with the enormous upswing in wounded vets entering in the system that he and his fellow Republicans created. Republicans refused to plan ahead because we would be greeted as liberators, given flowers and it would all be over in six weeks, six months tops. When the reality became otherwise, Norm employed Norm-speakTM.
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Nice try, 'Orwell'.
Congratulations. It takes a real gift to not only mis-use the word "Orwellian" (you apparently think it means something unpleasant that a Republican said), but to actually mis-use it in your rant that is a textbook example of "Orwellian" inversion.
If you had bothered to read the entire article, you might have noticed that it rightly places the delay in VA funding squarely on the narrow shoulders of the Democrats:
"[Bush] has not threatened a veto on the Veterans Affairs measure, however, even though it is about $4 billion more than his request.
In a twist, the fact that senators removed the Veterans Affairs measure was largely the making of the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Earlier this year, Democrats made changes to a Senate rule after complaining that Republicans had abused conference committees when they were in control by dropping in unrelated provisions during the penultimate stage of the legislative process. The Senate changed the rule to allow members to object to individual provisions in a conference report rather than the overall measure.
Under the law, if a point of order under Senate Rule 28 is sustained, language airdropped in during the conference committee is struck, and the bill without the offending language is sent back to the House. Before the law, sustaining a point of order would essentially kill the bill. The Veterans Affairs bill was attached to the Labor-HHS-Education bill during conference."
What that says, since you obviously failed to either read it or comprehend it, is this: President Bush wants to fund the VA. Democrats wanted to hold VA funding hostage and trade it for approval of last-minute unrelated spending. And thanks to THEIR OWN rule changes which they apparently don't even understand, they got busted and now they're whining about it.
In other words, you took an article about how Democrats have held up VA funding, and used it as the basis for a rant about how Republicans have held up VA funding.
It's hard to imagine a more striking example of Orwellian inversion.
So the bad news is that you're suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, along with a bad case of fake concern about the welfare of our troops. It makes you look like just another angry, cynical leftist, one who regards veterans with disdain or contempt most of the time, but then puffs up with sanctimonious concern for them when you see a chance to try to use them to score some cheap political points. That makes you almost as opportunistic and hypocritical as the Democrats who are holding our veterans' VA funding hostage as a political bargaining chip.
But the good news is that at least now you should know what "Orwellian" really means.
Under my real name
Since the beginning of the war-s, all of us bloggers have been getting reports of an underfunded VA. Even before the war, I know of vet who went so nuts, that the family turned him out on the street to protect the children, yet the VA still did not help him until 6 months later. This illness was not sudden, it had been building for years, getting ever worse.
I write under my real name. I watch and I pay attention.
You are trying to say this Republican leadership and this Republican party cares about and funds Veterans benefits - a total complete lie!
Not matter how you say it, no matter how you spin it, no matter how often you repeat it - it still is a complete total lie.