They just make it too easy

You know, every day, when I think about what I might like to write about, I always come back to the "regulars."  I ask myself these questions: 1) What have the Cubs been doing lately? 2) Did something really moronic happen to me recently? 3) Any good stuff in the news?

And the question that I ask that I always have a "yes" answer to (so it seems):

"Did the President and/or the GOP do or say anything dumb today?"

I think I harp on politics a bit too much, perhaps, but it is an election year and there is so much out there to digest and convey. 

(So get on with it!)

President Bush is the first President since 1930 to decline an invite to speak at the NAACP convention.

Bush received 9% of votes cast by African-Americans in 2000, and he lost the popular vote.  One would think that as a follow up to such a close election that he would be doing everything he could to keep every vote he received.  By snubbing the NAACP, he ensures himself of losing some of that 9%.  Granted, 9% may not be much, but it's something.  I'm sure Al Gore would have liked to have 9% more of the votes in Florida, or 9% more electoral votes.  You get the idea...

This man is so arrogant.  Not only does he refuse to speak at the convention, he makes petty comments about how he has a "non-relationship" with NAACP leadership and whines about "the names they have called me."  What is he afraid of?  What happened to being a "uniter, not a divider"? 

(Side note: "uniter" isn't even a word, at least not on my spell check, nor in the dictionary I just referenced.  So Bush was using a "non-word" in his catch phrase of the 2000 election.  That is so GW!)

I'm happy when I read things like this, solely because I see another window of opportunity to get this man out of office and back to his ranch.  It infuriates me that he propagates the underlying feelings that the GOP couldn't care less about minority issues.  They build more walls with each passing day.

Someone recently sent me a chain email that began with a note that the death toll in Iraq last month was about even with the homicide rate in Detroit, that the situation in Iraq "wasn't that bad" because there was almost as much killing in an American city as there was in the war.  It then went on about how this war is no different from wars fought during Democratic administrations-total partisan BS where historical facts are twisted to prove a supposed point.  But I was struck at just how truly idiotic it is to make a comparison between Iraq and Detroit.  We should be much more concerned about those that are killed in the streets of our cities, yet this administration ignores it, focusing instead on what is happening half a world away, and I can't help but wonder if it is because, on average, most of those killed in Detroit were minorities.  What if it were Beverly Hills instead of the Motor City?

I make a dangerous assumption there, but I live outside of Chicago, and the homicide rate here reflects that unfortunate trend as well.  Too many people die at the hand of violence in the inner cities.

Maybe GW is afraid someone at the NAACP is going to ask him why he is so hell bent on "fighting terror" overseas when he chooses to ignore a lot of the "terror" that goes on in his own country.

John Kerry is going to address the NAACP on the last day of the convention this week.  I will be waiting to see what he says and will offer my opinions on that as well.