You’re polling below thirty percent. You’re losing a war. Your legislative agenda is dead on arrival. Your Attorney General is less popular than gonorrhea. Your Secretary of State is bucking congressional subpoenas. And that is just for starters. Do you really think this is good politics?
Troops don’t need bigger pay raises, White House budget officials said Wednesday in a statement of administration policy laying out objections to the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill.
The Bush administration had asked for a 3 percent military raise for Jan. 1, 2008, enough to match last year’s average pay increase in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee recommends a 3.5 percent pay increase for 2008, and increases in 2009 through 2012 that also are 0.5 percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises.
The slightly bigger military raises are intended to reduce the gap between military and civilian pay that stands at about 3.9 percent today. Under the bill, HR 1585, the pay gap would be reduced to 1.4 percent after the Jan. 1, 2012, pay increase.
Bush budget officials said the administration “strongly opposes” both the 3.5 percent raise for 2008 and the follow-on increases, calling extra pay increases “unnecessary.”
Hell…I don’t know if it is necessary, but it sure as hell doesn’t sound right. This will provide a few more talking points in the 2008 elections…as if we needed any more. At this point, can we even remember them all?
Bush: Don’t go away mad, just go away.
Someone from IAVA mentioned on Countdown that even some lower-ranking officers’ families are on food stamps.
But it’s the Democrats who don’t love our troops according to the right-wing talking heads. Wonder how their spinning this little White House tidbit…
Detroit City Council is pushing for impeachment? It seems John Conyer’s wife is on the council. Rep. John Conyers has said he wouldn’t push for impeachment. I guess his wife wants him to get off his butt! LOL.
FINALLY, we’re in THAT kind of position that we’ve got talking points up the WAZOO to pummel the reactionaries, Republicans and neocons into dust at the polls, at least the Zogby and Quinnipac polls . . . as for the election polls, we STILL need to fix those . . .
Whee!
The response is predictable. Bush:
Quickly the meme spreads: “They didn’t sign up for the sake of a pay raise…”
Grunts earn a tenth of what contractors pull down. Probably less. When is someone going to ask him that?
He’s back on the bottle, right? Because the quality of his lies can’t go much lower. When are we going to stop this nonsense? I have to agree with Mike Gravel: anyone who enables this bastard isn’t fit for office.