Backstage w/Supak: organic, progressive, environmentalist

Hypocrites in Chief Bush and Cheney will keep Pennsylvania Ave. closed

The Republican National Committee harshly criticized Bill Clinton for closing Pennsylvania Ave. They said it was done arbitrarily. That Clinton did nothing to protect ordinary Americans while he made sure he was protected. Here's the quote.

Bill Clinton arbitrarily closed off Pennsylvania Avenue, the nation's Main Street, for his protection, while his policies left the public unprotected against vicious criminals. As a symbol of our determination to restore the rule of law - in the White House as well as in our streets - we will reopen Pennsylvania Avenue.

Today on NewsHour with Jim Leher, Cheney said:

Pennsylvania Avenue ought to stay closed because, as a fact, if somebody were to detonate a truck bomb in front of the White House, it would probably level the White House and that is unacceptable.

Well, well, well. Maybe Clinton was right about that one. Maybe he listened to the same secret service people who now protect the Resident of the White House, who told Uncle Dickhead the same thing they told Bill.

I'd like to take a closer look at the RNC platform statement about protecting Americans. Besides the fact that crime rates went way down during Clinton's terms (I'm sure the RNC has some bassackward argument for how that's a Regan-Bush leftover), I think it's odd that they oppose the federalization of airport safety personel. Hey, here they are, finally listening to their federal safety personel, namely the secret service, but they don't think the American public deserves federal protection. While they criticized Clinton for wanting to protect himself and not the public, they are now doing even worse! They are saying that the public should have minimum wage security personel that are employed by the lowest bidders. Meanwhile, the hypocritical Resident in Chief has plenty of federalized protection, including a now permanently closed Pennsylvania Ave. which they said they would re-open. I'll just add it to another of his long list of lies that starts with Kyoto and just keeps going..... There's nothing compassionate about this conservative. I'd like to know what Rod Grams (Republican Senator and general loudmouth from Minnesota) and his outher loudmouthed Clinton haters have to say about their precious symbol of democracy that Clinton ruined now. Anybody want to step up and tell Georgie boy to open the street?

I didn't think so.

Now on to some other possibilities for truck bombs. Before September 11, Republicans really wanted to let unsafe Mexican trucks drive all over US roads, even though we can only, by the reckoning of the inspector general of the transportation department, inspect 2% of all the trucks coming across the Mexican border. Of course, everything's easier to get in Mexico, including a truck driving liscense, and explosives. I wonder if we're going to now take advantage of any national security clauses in NAFTA so we don't have to let thousands of big rigs into this country without knowing what they're carrying. In the Republican rush to put the Teamsters out of business (except for hauling oil out of ANWR), maybe we've given the terrorists a way to import hundreds, or even thousands, of bombs bigger than the Oklahoma City one.

At least we know that no Mexican truck will be getting near the whitehouse, despite the best efforts of the GOP....