NoMoreGreed.com Week in Review – Prejean, Obama, and Gitmo

What a wonderful week it was for the NoMoreGreed eagle-eyed reporting team!  From bimbos to bozos, it was a week full of chuckles, jaw-droppers, and head-scratchers.  Let’s get right to the mayhem…

Bimbos, Busts, and Boneheads

There is nothing as pathetically precious as a beauty pageant contestant with skeletons in her closet.  You always get the feeling that opening the door could lead to a cascading waterfall of dusty bones.  It’s like watching the the David Letterman scandal unfold only she’s wearing a string bikini instead of orthopedic socks.

Vanessa Williams set the bar for future contestants pretty high back in her day.  Beautiful, smart, and talented, Williams burst onto the national stage in a blaze of glory when she won the national pageant.  Then she flamed out in a flash when revelations of erotic photos hit the press.  Of course Williams’ career later recovered with songs such as, “Save the Best for Last” and movies like, “Eraser.”  Now she has a hit TV series (who’s name we will not pronounce) on her resume.  So Vanessa is now A-list material and those nasty photos are a distant memory.

Back in the day, though, her career looked pretty toasty.

Fast-forward to the latest poster child for all things Fox and conservative family values – Carrie Prejean.

Let’s face it, folks.  The original revelation of Prejean’s “boob” job was humorous enough.  You mean to tell me that the Miss California pageant officials actually paid to buy the girl a pair of bolt-ons just to enhance her strut appeal?  I used to say, “Nothing stuns me any more.”  Then I heard about the California organizing committee buying silicone implants for its up-n-coming star.  Buying a soldier a prosthetic arm is a good use of corporate spare change.  But buying beauty contestants pump-up breasts…?  What have we sunk to in this country?

Then there was that little “wardrobe malfunction” photo session Prejean made when she was…  well, I’d say “young and stupid,” but she’s still young and, judging by the way she handled Larry King the other night, still a tad on the dopey side.

Then there was the news of the sex tape.  Oh, this just gets more and more precious, doesn’t it?

All of this would be hysterically funny if it didn’t also carry with it a hint of ironic tragedy.  You see, my friend in the conservative religious right, we all jumped right on Prejean’s bandwagon immediately after she uttered the words “man and woman” and “marriage” during the national pageant.  “Poster girl alert!  Poster girl alert!”  We didn’t bother to do the due diligence necessary to assure our messianic hopes weren’t pinned to the bare-shouldered sarong of a borderline bimbo.

From what I have seen this past week Carrie Prejean forgot the one thing to remember about life in the public limelight.  Today’s press is lousy at telling the whole story and uniquely gifted at finding the most embarrassing dirt you’d rather leave swept under the rug.  Prejean seemed positively stunned that someone – “Softball” Larry King, in this instance – would ask her about her (gasp!) sex tape.  I watched the interplay later, with Prejean calling Larry’s mostly vacuous questions “inappropriate.”  Earlier in the day I watched as Prejean brushed away questions by Meredith Viera on the Today show with some drivel about, “When you’re a model you do things to further your career…”

Bleh.

Carrie, dear, if you’re going to go out and hawk a book about your life you might want to be prepared for some folks to be interested in the most prurient, lurid details.

To dear friends on the religious right, let me remind you of this truth.  “The enemy of my enemy is NOT necessarily my friend.”  Just ‘cuz Carrie Prejean was openly homophobic on the national stage does NOT make her a poster child for all things theologically enlightened and family-friendly.

I have no clue whether Carrie Prejean is a Christian or not.  Whether she is or not is irrelevant in the grand scheme of this present circumstance.  What I do know is that it would be a whole lot easier to support Prejean if she would just come clean before people like Viera and King and say something along these lines…

Listen – I am not proud of what I did back then.  I am a changed person.  I am looking to the public to forgive me for doing stupid stuff that I thought would further my career and help me get an even more important message out; that marriage is rightfully between a man and a woman.

Now THAT would be a story worth listening to.

“Ti-i-i-ime, Isn’t On My Side…”

Dear Mr. President,

You know, I fully “get” the fact that you are a thoughtful, intellectual dude.  I can tell you are the brightest guy in the room, even when you say you aren’t the brightest guy in the room.  No, I don’t think you’re some secret Muslim trying to drop the guard of a trusting nation and then swooping in to implement Shari ‘ah law.  I’m no paranoid conspiracy theorist.  The sinful, greedy nature of man is sufficient enough to cause anyone, let alone a guy with your level of power, to make silly, universalist choices.  I, for one, don’t think Satan needs to be pulling your puppet strings in some grand, Machiavellian plot in order for you to do dumb things.

What I do think is that you now risk making the great waffler, Bill Clinton, look like a hot-headed, knee-jerk gunslinger.

I fully understand that you want to do the “right” thing in Afghanistan.  I understand that you are more sensitive to the needs and wants of the Muslim world because you are trying to over-compensate for the hair-triggered, cowboy-esque policies of the Bush Administration.  More than anything, I know you don’t want the lives of innocent civilians on your mind.

But as a wise man once told me…

“There are no good answers to this one, son.”

Afghanistan is a quagmire you didn’t create but which you must now navigate.  To paraphrase that musical genius Gerry Rafferty, “Clowns to the left of me, Taliban to the right, here I am – stuck in the middle with you.”

At this point, Mr. President, your self-conscious reticence makes you look weak.  You appear vacillating and indecisive, not thoughtfully conclusive.

Enough delays!

Pick a course, knowing full well that it will be a compromise at best.  Pick a course knowing that you will almost of necessity make a “correction” six months down the line.  Innocent civilians will die in the cross fire, the Taliban has made certain of that.  Every day we are there we increasingly look like the bad guy, not the liberator.  Young American men and women will be killed and maimed whether you send more troops or withdraw unilaterally.  That is the price of this war.  It is also the price we will pay for remaining there another day longer.

But pulling out in a rush is equally unacceptable.  Notwithstanding the fact that the Karzai government is a ship of corrupt fools programmed to screw up whatever we do, we owe it to the Afghan people to not simply uproot and run without doing a little bit more to give them a fighting chance against the Taliban.

My proxy and yours, Mr. President – the American service person in country – will inevitably pay the price.  I can understand why you are dragging your feet knowing that the stakes are truly life and death for people who are merely following orders.

At this point foot-dragging is putting our in-field fighting force at greater risk.  One way or another, Mr. President, it is time to make a choice and live with the consequences.

You have had more than enough time to weigh all the options.  It is time to make a decision.

Gotta Git Me Outta Gitmo

Greg Craig’s abrupt resignation this week marked a dramatic milestone in the Obama Administration’s race through 2009.  The once frenetic pace of Obama’s campaign agenda hit yet another redwood-sized speed bump and Craig’s departure was the most obvious sign.  Craig was ostensibly charged with shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center in which some of the world’s skeeviest ne’er-do-wells are now housed.

He failed.

Obama made a grand promise when he ran for office.  Within one year he planned to shut down the Guantanamo detention center, holding and trying terror suspects the old fashioned way; in American court on American soil.

Small hitch.

Nobody – neither Democrats nor Republicans – wants these turkeys on American soil.

So Craig hit roadblock after congressional roadblock as he sought solutions to enact Obama’s promise.

Now Craig, a long-time Washington insider dating back to the Clinton administration is on the outside looking in.  Now we see the date of Gitmo’s eventual demise through binoculars, not reading glasses.

Where to next?  We saw a clue later in the week as Eric Holder announced that the mastermind of 9/11 and some of his bosom buddies are being shipped to New York for housing and prosecution.  (In an interesting side note, it appeared even “O” was a bit surprised by Holder’s announcement.  More on that another day…)

The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his chums is a pivotal point in our reckoning with the fallout of 9/11.  Outside of strident Bushies and Fox News there aren’t too many folks who think that Gitmo represents the pinnacle of American jurisprudence.  After all, this country was founded on the notion that the justice system can handle just about anything we can throw at it.

There also aren’t too many folks who want an Islamic Jihadist living in the next cul-de-sac over, either.  The notion of bringing people onto our soil who could elicit further retaliatory bombings should we take them to trial is pretty frightening.

So where do we go from here?

The answer is uncertain and the options are murky.  Close Gitmo and you no longer have a safe, off-shore location to store the worst of the worst.  Leave Gitmo open and you send a tacit message to the rest of the world – Islamic extremists included – that America is a frightened country not truly ready to live up to its highest, stated ideals.

There is no good answer to this dilemma.  Solomon himself would probably choose to punt because there is no baby to split.

What I do know is this.  If we bring guys like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into downtown New York we put millions of people at risk.  Put it on the calendar, friends.  This won’t just be a media circus.  This will be like dropping a gigantic terrorist magnet mere feet from the location of Ground Zero.

If we are so dead-set on doing this in America, perhaps the better thing to do would be to drop it in the middle of the Great Plains somewhere.  It might be one way of getting all those radicalized militia groups to actually serve a legitimate purpose for a change.

I’m just sayin’…

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