Affirmative action is un-American, racist, condescending, infantilizing, and the final sign of the Apocalypse/Rapture. Unless it’s the right kind of affirmative action…. The kind that hurts America but helps religion and the GOP’s far right wing. Salon has the goods on the latest Bush-mongered ‘speaks in tongues well but couldn’t find her buttocks with both hands’ wannabee appointed to a post of the highest significance. First it was Michael “A little water never hurt anyone” Brown. Then Harriet “Why do y’all keep bringing up the Constitution?” Miers. Now it’s a Christo-right wing zealot whose mission in life is to punish anyone who has sex EVER. For their own good of course.
A disastrous appointment: Bush’s backdoor choice of unqualified right-winger Ellen Sauerbrey to head the U.S. refugee-response team raises the specter of Michael Brown.
…Bush couldn’t slip his nomination for assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration under the radar. It’s too important a position. With a $700 million annual budget, the department formulates America’s response to refugee crises all over the world. So in October 2005, when Bush picked Ellen Sauerbrey, right-wing social conservative with little background in international affairs, to replace Arthur (“Gene”) Dewey, a career foreign policy official, newspapers all over the country ? including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Antonio Express-News, the Miami Herald and the Charlton Gazette ? came out against her. During her October Senate hearings, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said, “It doesn’t appear that you have very specific experience.” Given Sauerbrey’s weak r?sum? for the position, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., convinced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to put off a vote on her nomination until after the winter break. At the time, there seemed a slim possibility that the appointment would be defeated.
Rather than fight it out on Capitol Hill, Bush chose to circumvent the confirmation process. Yesterday, with Congress out of session, the president made more than a dozen recess appointments, granting positions to several controversial nominees. Julie L. Myers was made head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau at the Department of Homeland Security, despite criticism by Democrats and Republicans that she lacks experience. Tracy A. Henke became executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness; as the Washington Post reported, “She had been accused in her politically appointed post at the Justice Department of demanding that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks in traffic cases be deleted from a news release.”
Sauerbrey is already being compared to Michael Brown, the hapless former head of FEMA who famously worried about his on-camera wardrobe while New Orleans drowned. “If she is confirmed by the Senate, think of her as the Michael D. Brown of the refugee world,” opined the Washington Post. Her lack of qualifications are so glaring that two of the last three people to hold the position ? Democrat Phyllis E. Oakley and Republican Julia Taft, both of whom served under Clinton ? signed a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opposing her confirmation.
Hard to see how we’re going to bring freedom to Iraq when the same folks are trying to impose Sharia law here at home.
