Like a Sparrow’s Belch in the Midst of a Typhoon

A few interesting news items from the past couple of weeks.

First, President Obama signed an Executive Order creating a bipartisan commission to examine our long-term federal budget woes. This idea was formerly supported by Congressional Republicans; but Senate Republicans torpedoed legislation creating the commission a couple of weeks ago - once the President said he supported the plan.

President Obama has appointed retired Republican Senator Alan Simpson to co-chair the commission. Simpson is a curmudgeon from Wyoming who was interviewed for a New York Times blog of several days ago:

Asked if he would serve on the commission if asked, Mr. Simpson, reached in Cody, Wyo., said, “I’ll just say I’m very frustrated and I can’t believe what’s happening to our country.”

“There isn’t a single sitting member of Congress, not one, that doesn’t know exactly where we’re headed,” Mr. Simpson continued. “And to use the politics of fear and division and hate on each other — we are at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.”

Democratic officials said Mr. Simpson would be critical to helping give the presidential commission credibility and to undercut Congressional Republicans’ complaints that it would be a partisan Democratic panel, designed to force tax increases. Mr. Simpson, who served in the Senate from 1979 to 1997 and rose to be the second-ranking Republican leader, was widely known as an outspoken senator who could be cantankerous or funny, and did not shirk from partisanship.

With characteristic folksiness, Mr. Simpson in the interview dismissed claims from Republicans that reining in deficits would be easy or accomplished with spending cuts alone. “But they don’t cut spending,” he said, citing the administration of President George W. Bush when Republicans also controlled Congress. “Don’t forget the Republicans never vetoed a single bill in six and a half years. How is that for cutting spending?”

“To say that all we have to do is take care of waste, fraud and abuse, and foreign aid is a like a sparrow’s belch in the midst of typhoon,” he said. “That is nothing, less than 1 percent of the budget.”

Time will tell whether or not the commission will be worthwhile - but don't get your hopes up - Mr. Simpson's candor notwithstanding...

On a more optimistic note, I was very impressed with the testimony of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chief's of Staff, when several weeks ago he spoke before a Senate committee looking into the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law which prohibits openly gay persons from serving in the armed forces.

From the Washington Post:

"Speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do," the nation's top military officer told the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me personally, it comes down to integrity -- theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

The Republicans on the committee looked mighty unhappy with the Admiral. That little shitweasel, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, got pretty nasty with the Admiral - something you don't see very often. Sessions impugned Mullen's integrity by accusing him of using "undue command influence" on the issue.

The Admiral's response was classic - vaguely reminiscent of army attorney Joseph Welch's confrontation with good ol' Senator McCarthy way back when...

As the challenges to his integrity continued, Mullen pursed his lips, then put his forearms on the table, displaying the admiral stripes on his sleeves. After Sessions's provocation, the Joint Chiefs chairman glared at the diminutive Alabamian. "This is not about command influence," Mullen said. "This is about leadership, and I take that very seriously."

Yesterday, an interesting follow-up article appeared in McClatchey News online. The Admiral has been doing a number of the military's version of "town hall" meetings with the troops. Questions about the possible repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" have been noticeable by their absence at these meetings.

Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was nearing the end of a 25-minute question and answer session with troops serving here when he raised a topic of his own: "No one's asked me about 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" he said.

As it turned out, none of the two dozen or so men or women who met with Mullen at Marine House in the Jordanian capital Tuesday had any questions on the 17-year-old policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military — or Mullen's public advocacy of its repeal.

Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Darryl E. Robinson, who's the operations coordinator for defense attache's office at the U.S. Embassy here, explained why after the session. "The U.S. military was always at the forefront of social change," he said. "We didn't wait for laws to change."

...

At Tuesday's session, which included not only Marines, but members of the Army and the Air Force, both male and female service members explained their indifference to the issue: They'd already served with gays and lesbians, they accepted that some kind of change was imminent, and, they said, the nation was too engulfed in two wars for a prolonged debate about it.

These comments from our troops are interesting to me in several respects. First, they are another illustration of how the people of this country have, on MANY issues, left the pols in the dust. And perhaps more significantly they demonstrate how little interest my daughters' generation has in taking the bait on the right-wing's culture wars agenda.

Sometimes indifference is good...it closely resembles tolerance.

Finally, I have received several comments regarding my interest in ravens - or "rats with wings" as one commentator called them. In response, I direct you to the following old blog which includes a very interesting video on ravens making and using tools. They are also fair mathematicians. Here's the link...scroll down a bit 'til you get to my buddies: http://www.perlgurl.org/archives/2007/02/

Well, time to go to the elders. Then a workout and maybe a walk on the beach if the sun breaks through the fog.