Julie Pace, the Associated Press White House correspondent, did not have a flattering description of President Obama’s trip to India later this week. Via the Weekly Standard,
“President Obama crosses into one of the indisputable stages of a lame duck presidency this week. That is the non-essential foreign travel stage,” Pace said on CNN. “He’s going to India basically for a parade and a visit to the Taj Mahal.
“Yes, there are strategic interests with India, and those will be on the agenda, but think about the timing of this. The president is going to India three days after his State of the Union Address. A period of time when he normally would be out trying to rally Congress and the public behind his agenda. I think this says all you need to know about the likelihood that anything he announces on Tuesday actually gets done.”
Good to see The Weekly Standard still has no idea what it’s talking about:
The president is going to India three days after his State of the Union Address. A period of time when he normally would be out trying to rally Congress and the public behind his agenda.
In reality, here’s what our Congress has chosen as most important for their agenda:
Already, six bills reviving old, bad ideas have been introduced in the new Congress, including one that would deny federal funds for family planning to any organization that provides abortions. Its main target is Planned Parenthood, which provides access to birth control, and breast and cervical cancer screening for millions of low-income women, and offers abortion services.
I’m sure we can all well recall how many times our local Republican candidates for Congress emphasized these bills as a top priority: zero. Washington state has been pro-choice for decades. Although pandering to embittered anti-choice losers is a staple of national Republican politics, they are careful not to speak too loudly of it where we normal voters can hear.
If any of these bad ideas survive to reach the President’s desk, he will simply flick them away with his veto pen. Then, the Republicans, having fed their base’s hopeless anti-choice obsession for another year, can actually work on real issues. Meanwhile, President Obama can practice diplomacy in the world’s most populous democracy, a country in the same region as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, and China.
Nice try buckeroo. Planned Parenthood gets a big chunk of taxpayer $$ and then turns a nice healthy profit and pays their top dogs very well… on the taxpayers. Planned Parenthood can exist for all I care. HOWEVER, I don’t agree that taxpayers should be funding it. They are a nonprofit organization and they can do like the rest of the nonprofits and have fundraisers.
Well, you’re in luck: the Republicans in Congress made de-funding Planned Parenthood a top priority, even though not a word was spoken about this agenda by their candidates around here during our recent elections. Too bad none of their anti-PP blathering (which you’ve swallowed hook, line, and sinker) will make any difference in the end.
Once they are done pandering to the embittered losers who form the remaining anti-choice movement in our country, President Obama might be able to engage them on the real issues which we Americans care about. Until then, our great trading partner, India, is a great place for Presidential attention.