Lie of the Ancient Mariner

.oO If this doesn’t get me in the Oval Office, nothing will. Oo.

Think of the “dust up” that would’ve ensued if Clark had floated (no pun intended) the notion that McCain had started the Forrestal fire in 1967.

Yesterday on Facial the Nation, retired general Wesley Clark said something inescapably true that apparently Republican surrogates are vehemently denying: That getting shot down and held in a POW camp for five years is not in itself a qualification to be President.

Clark prefaced his comments to Bob Schieffer by saying McCain “endured physical torment in service to our country” and “no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides.” And then, “I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war.” You know, vicious deadcatting like that.

After farting out some dust, Schieffer then said that Obama didn’t have any military experience at all, to which Clark responded, “Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

Well, I don’t have to tell you what happened next: Camp McCain organized a conference call involving five people, including John Warner, Bob “Little Blue Pill” Dole and the unfortunately-named Lt. Col. Orson Swindle. In other words, GOP partisans. The AP article says in the second paragraph, “The candidates, Obama and McCain, took the high road while the bare-knuckled language was left to their surrogates.” Uh huh.

This is how McCain took “the high road”, emphasis mine:

“If that’s the kind of campaign Sen. Obama and his surrogates and supporters want to engage in, I understand that. But it doesn’t reduce the price of gas by one penny. It doesn’t achieve our energy independence or make it come any closer. Doesn’t make any American stay in their home who's at risk of losing it today. And it certainly doesn't do anything to address the challenges Americans have in keeping their jobs, homes and supporting their families.”

Well, back atcha you, Captain Crunch. Your gas tax holiday is a long-discredited joke. Offering $300,000,000 for a car battery that already exists does not even begin to address the necessity for oil independence (it takes oil to manufacture any car, plus the oil required to power the power stations from which we derive our electricity that would charge your three hundred million dollar battery) and the last time I looked, I don’t recall you offering anything but cartoonish solutions for the subprime housing crisis.

And, uh, Obama quickly distanced himself from Clark’s remarks, which were made to represent the general’s own views and not Obama’s nor any of his surrogates. You, on the other hand, five weeks ago had already taken swipes at Obama for not serving in the military, a judgment that you chose not to reserve for that champagne flight yahoo against whom you ran in 2000.

We have got to stop deifying Republican presidential candidates simply for having served and even suffering during wartime (Bush, I hate to bring up again, did neither. Alright, I don’t hate to say it). We also need to stop needlessly criticizing and scrutinizing that of Democrats running for the same office. Nixon had briefly called the account of the sinking of PT 109 into question and had the good sense to back off. But this isn’t 1960 anymore. And when it comes to Republicans, we tend to dust off the John Sousa Phillip songs and play them whenever that rarest of animals, a Republican who’d actually served in the military during actual wartime and actually suffered harm, climbs onto a stump.

Clark, who’d graduated first in his class while McCain finished 894th out of 899, is right. Getting shot down into a lake and sitting in a POW camp for five years doesn’t qualify McCain to be president anymore than Kennedy getting his boat sunk qualified him for the job. Anymore than Nelson Mandela's decades in prison in South Africa qualified him to be president of that country.

So support Gen. Clark and sign Vote Vets’ petition before Clark does the inevitable and apologizes for telling the truth and let’s put this military hero worship in mothballs.

Addendum: This is to serve notice that I'm finally completely out of blogging forever. I deleted Pottersville tonight at about 9:15 and have absolutely no plans to come back with a third blog. It's sucking the life out of me, out of my novel, out of my time and the benefits, the justification, the entire reason is simply no longer there.

So, Jilly, thanks for letting me post here at B@B but I'd appreciate it if you would remove me as a contributor for both here and the Chris Matthews blog.

Thanks.

Robert

Is the fix in already?

Did John McCain let slip the dogs of election theft today?

This peculiarly cryptic page by wanker de luxe Mark Halperin indicates that McCain said in Pipersville, PA, "that the state will pick the winner in November — and he will be behind until right before the polls close."

And what happens right before the polls close in Pennsylvania, Senator? Do they swap out the smart cards in the voting machines? Do they decide that there's a terrorist threat and the vote counting has to be done in secret? Tell us, Senator McCain: WHAT HAPPENS RIGHT BEFORE THE POLLS CLOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW ABOUT?????

Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Keith Olbermann, for his special comment tonight on Barack Obama and FISA (video to come as soon as it's up).

Money quote:

The Republicans are going to call you the names any which way, Senator.

They're going to cry regardless, Senator.

And as the old line goes: give them something to cry about.

You'd almost think they WANTED a stronger Al-Qaeda

When you look at how the Bush Administration has fought its so-called "war on terror", you'd think that they defined "terror" as "free Americans" and that Al-Qaeda were their allies in this war. How else to explain that every policy this administration has implemented has benefitted Al-Qaeda?

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.

The new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was intended to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave a smoother path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington’s risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan. They also argue that catching Mr. bin Laden will come only by capturing some of his senior lieutenants alive.

But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

A recent American airstrike killing Pakistani troops has only inflamed tensions along the mountain border and added to tensions between Washington and Pakistan’s new government.

The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Joe Lieberman, like so many of the Republicans with whom he's cast his lot, is saying, in essence, "Vote for John McCain or die horribly in a terrorist attack." Given that John McCain advocates not just staying in Iraq forever if necessary, but also expanding the war into Iran, it's difficult to imagine that his policies would do anything to combat the threat. It seems that the Republican anti-terror policy consists of a lot of bellicose rhetoric, and killing a bunch of people who didn't do a thing to us, while letting those who would do us harm go free.

It makes you wonder just whose side they're on.

John asks the question so I don't have to

The word "entitled" has been thrown around a lot this primary season. Barack Obama's supporters perceive Hillary Clinton as feeling she's entitled to the presidency. Hillary Clinton's supporters find Barack Obama "arrogant" and think HE feels entitled to the presidency.

But is there a candidate with a bigger sense of entitlement than John McCain? In media circles, the mere mention of McCain must be accompanied by "war hero." But is he? Does even five years in a Hanoi prison, succumbing to torture and making a propaganda video for one's enemy captors, however understandable, make you a hero? Or are you just a victim, one deserving of understanding and empathy -- but not the presidency?

Or is this one of those things no one dares talk about, like the guys in the World Trade Center who were sitting at their desks having their morning coffee when a plane hit their building and immolated them, or the ones stranded on the high floors or the ones who tried to get out and just didn't make it? I know that the family of one of these guys has comforted themselves for the past seven years with the idea that their son/brother died a hero. But that isn't the case for the guys who were just unlucky enough to show up for work in the financial and real estate and other firms headquartered in the building that day.

Some of these people ARE heroes. Abraham Zelmanowitz is a hero. He stayed behind rather than leave a quadriplegic friend to die alone. Brian Clark is a hero. He rescued Stanley Praimnath, a man who literally had an airplane fly into his office, simply by talking him through breaking through the wall that divided him from safety, then helped pull him through. There are no doubt many, ,many other, less celebrated stories of heroism that day from people who weren't those who were heroic by definition -- the firefighters and police who tried to get people out. But not everyone who died that day is by definition a hero.

There's no shame in being the victim of a horrific tragedy, or even of capture by the enemy while in war. I know that here in the U.S., we fancy ourselves to be lantern-jawed superheroes, and we want to believe that heroism exists in all events of adversity. The loss of a kid who was sitting in the back seat of a car when a classmate skidded on a rain-slicked road and hit a tree doesn't have to have heroically tried to get the others out of the car in order for his death to be a tragedy. A guy having his morning coffee and bagel when a plane hits his building does't have to try to get other people out for his death to be a tragedy. Why should we add the burden of trying to find heroism in the sudden death of a loved one to the shock and grief experienced by those s/he left behind? Why should we feel we have to turn everyone who is lost senselessly into Spider-Man in order to mourn them? A loss is a loss, whether the person was heroic in his/her last moments or not.

And we don't have to elevate the misfortune of enemy capture, and even the admirable feat of mere survival of an enemy prison, into a free pass to the presidency.

John Aravosis asks the question I've long wanted to but didn't dare: How does being captured by the enemy make you a military expert? In theory, McCain's experience should make him MORE reticent to go to war, and to stay at war, without a clearly-defined mission. And yet he favors endless occupation of Iraq. He more than anyone else in politics today understands what torture does to a man -- and yet he caved to the sadist George W. Bush on torture, obviously for purely political reasons.

John McCain can say "Country first" till the cows come home. It doesn't change the fact that this is a man who not only plays the torture card the way Hillary Clinton played the "The boys are being mean to me card", but who thinks that being captured and tortured by the enemy somehow makes you an expert on All Things Military.

There are few things more dangerous to long-term psychological health than the notion that because you endured something horrific, it means you're entitled to something. This country is full of people who have had years of therapy and gotten stuck at "It's because my father/mother never loved me and so the world owes me a living", rather than taking the next step into healing.

The only thing that should entitle John McCain to the presidency is whether he would be the best leader for the country. And in his craven capitulation to the worst elements of his party and his compromising of the very long-held positions that have led to the relentless hammering by the media of the "maverick" meme, the answer is "no." And it doesn't matter what happened to him in that Hanoi prison.

UPDATE: Wesley Clark doesn't think that getting shot down is a qualification for the presidency either:

Bilderberg '08: Woodstock for Scumbags

Until just a few years ago, the Bilderberg Group used to be just a looney liberal conspiracy theory.

Now, thanks largely to Alex Jones of Infowars and Prison Planet, many, many more of us know about them, when they meet and where. Seeing this video just made me loathe the Bilderberg Group more than ever.

Sunday Night Nostalgia

TV commercial for 1964 Dodge Dart:

Look ma, no car seats. And those kids lived to tell the tale.

Who the hell in Congress authorized this?

The expansion of the war into Iran is approaching:

The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh's report, which appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

The new article, "Preparing the Battlefield," is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran.

He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. Watch Hersh discuss what he says are the administration's plans for Iran

"As usual with his quarterly pieces, we'll decline to comment," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN.

More, including video, at Crooks and Liars.

Sy Hersh's article is here. So in answer to my question, yes, Virginia, the fucking weasel Democrats sold us down the river again:

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. President Bush questioned the N.I.E.’s conclusions, and senior national-security officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made similar statements. (So did Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee.) Meanwhile, the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that “significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.”)

[snip]

Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House’s. One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran. (In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)

The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said. The covert operations set forth in the Finding essentially run parallel to those of a secret military task force, now operating in Iran, that is under the control of JSOC. Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference.

And they gave him Congressional cover anyway. Unbefuckinglievable.

The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.

The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.

Wonderful. Another "sternly worded letter." Like that's ever done a lot of good with this bunch of criminals.

On March 15, 2005, David Obey, then the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, announced that he was putting aside an amendment that he had intended to offer that day, and that would have cut off all funding for national-intelligence programs unless the President agreed to keep Congress fully informed about clandestine military activities undertaken in the war on terror. He had changed his mind, he said, because the White House promised better coöperation. “The Executive Branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do,” he said in a floor speech at the time. “We are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble.”

Obey declined to comment on the specifics of the operations in Iran, but he did tell me that the White House reneged on its promise to consult more fully with Congress. He said, “I suspect there’s something going on, but I don’t know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he’d find a way to do it. We still don’t get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge.”

Figure that out all by yourself, Einstein? So why the fuck did you give these people authorization to do this?

None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes—would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, “is just that—notification, and not a sign-off on activities. Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee.” However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy. (A spokesman for the C.I.A. said, “As a rule, we don’t comment one way or the other on allegations of covert activities or purported findings.” The White House also declined to comment.)

A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, “it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.” He went on, “We control the money and they can’t do anything without the money. Money is what it’s all about. But I’m very leery of this Administration.” He added, “This Administration has been so secretive.”

But THEY GAVE THIS ADMINISTRATION THE FUCKING MONEY TO DO THIS ANYWAY.

I don't even know what to say. It isn't that I didn't know that Our Democratic Party was a bunch of craven, weak-kneed pushovers. It isn't that I didn't know that they work for the same corporate masters that the Republicans do, only they don't even have enough self-respect to ask for the big bucks, being content instead to settle for the scraps left over after the Republicans have gorged themselves till their buttons are popping.

Why the fuck are we even bothering to participate in this charade of an election, when our own party has told us that there is absolutely zero air space between themselves and the Republican agenda of police state and bankrupting the country through endless war? What the fuck's the point?

Will Someone Wake Up the Barbarians to the North, Please?

This is just so fucking disgusting that I cannot even watch the whole thing (the porno music alone was almost the deal-breaker for me). I thought the $1000 bagel was pushing it. But this...

Chocolate and truffles are not supposed to be this decadent, especially when we're paying $4 for gas and losing our homes left and right.

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere

Because there is just too much unbelievable, mind-boggling crap going on for me to write about.

At Group News Blog, Jesse Wendel writes about how the government now claims it has the right to seize your laptop, your flash drive, your iPOD, and any other device you carry, in the name of fighting terrorism, kiddie porn, or the tattered remains of the Fourth Amendment (you know, the one the gun nuts don't give a shit about). And The Littlest Gator writes about the tomato salmonella outbreak, which has now sickened 800 people -- and no one even seems to care anymore...perhaps because we have reached outrage fatigue stasis.

At Down with Tyranny, the Ciara Durkin case is revived, and not surprisingly, the government is still saying it was a case of suicide. Yup. And Pat Tillman wasn't killed by friendly fire. And I am Marie of Rumania.

Jurassicpork on how the Bush Administration drank our milkshake.

JellyJules is still having a tough time dealing with the loss of her (and our) beloved Maya's Granny. Go give her a hug.

Fran I Am recounts a funny story about what happens when people go off their nut over terrorism.

Digby on how we were right all along when we chanted "No Blood for Oil!" before the Iraq War.

Tata weighs in on the Bureau of Land Management's freeze on solar power initiatives -- and throws in a cool Warner Bros. cartoon reference in the bargain.

It's ShortWoman's blogiversary this month! And since there's one more day, you can still buy her a present.

If you're a disgruntled Hillarion thinking that somehow voting for John McCain will show that mean old Barack Obama, you might consider reading Max Blumenthal in The Nation. Yes, Max's genitalia is not of the "correct" configuration for you, but he shows that even the Arizona GOP knows what a wack-a-doodle the Senator from the Desert is.

But they want to drill for sticky black stuff everywhere

You don't even have to STUDY the environmental impact of offshore drilling, we already know the impact:

But for the Bush Administration, it's "Full Speed Ahead!" on drilling, while they want a fucking environmental impact on....solar power.

Yes, folks, SOLAR:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy.

Much progress has been made in the development of both types of solar technology in the last few years. Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006. Eleven concentrating solar plants are operational in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permitting, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation and wildlife. In California, for example, solar developers often hire environmental experts to assess the effects of construction on the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

Since when do they give a flying fuck about native vegetation and wildlife? They want to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife refuge, with idiotic wingnut Congresswomen claiming that the caribou will belly up to the nice warm pipes to have their Starbucks. You think I'm joking?

This Administration is going to do everything it can, via squeezing Americans at the gas pumps, to get its way on oil drilling, the better to enrich the Bush and Cheney families and their cronies and friends in the oil industry. Meanwhile, a young industry that promises a renewable source of fuel is subject to a freeze while the federal government drags its feet on environmental impact studies that it doesn't find necessary while drilling for poison.

And with John McCain, we get even more of this insanity.

And THIS guy is trying to paint BARACK OBAMA as the elitist??

As if it weren't bad enough that the McCains, like a pair of desert Leona Helmsleys, believe that only the little people pay taxes, it seems that last week John McCain did his best impression of George Herbert Walker Bush when the latter expressed amazement over a supermarket scanner:

John McCain kind of stepped in it the other day, here in California, but luckily no one noticed. He was being driven from John Wayne airport to a fundraiser, and he took a quick call from Martin Wisckol of the Orange County Register. Wisckol asked him a series of softball questions so tedious McCain's driver had to crack the window so the breeze would keep him from passing out, but then this:

WISCKOL: I'd like to ask you a couple questions suggested by voters here. They're not reporter-type questions.

McCAIN: Sure. It'd be a pleasure.

WISCKOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost? 


McCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters. I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

But hey, he is "aware of the people" in the same way he is "aware of the internet" (and presumably its traditions), so that makes it all OK. That his campaign staff does the Google for him because he doesn't know how to use a computer (something even my 81-year-old mother does) and that the Secret Service pumps gas for him and that he paid $273,144 in 2007 in wages for his household staff is immaterial. He's just like the rest of us, while the black guy who was the son of a single mother and who went to college on scholarships and who's married to a woman whose father was a blue collar worker who went to work every despite having multiple sclerosis is the elitist.

In the same world where Chris Matthews and the late Tim Russert were just regular guys despite that their social lives all took place within Beltway circles and George W. Bush was a roughhewn Texas rancher instead of the Spoiled Brat of Kennebunkport. You know, that world of pure imagination:

Stay Delusional. Vote McCain.

That should be John McCain's new slogan. Because after nearly five and a half years of spinning our wheels in Iraq, John McCain, like the man he wants to succeed, says that a trillion dollars into our little adventure in Iraq, we're finally making progress. Not enough progress to leave, that will NEVER happen, but enough progress to perhaps fool enough people into supporting dumping more of their children's future into this mess:

Appearing together in solidarity, Republican John McCain and Iraq’s president said yesterday that the war-ravaged country is making significant but fragile progress.

The GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting expressed confidence about prospects for the two countries completing a complex agreement that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at year’s end. And Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said an American military presence still was needed.

“I, of course, am encouraged. We both agree that the progress has been significant but the progress is also fragile. And there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” McCain said at the end of a private meeting with Talabani.

Meanwhile, back in reality:

Senior Iraqi government officials said Saturday that a U.S. Special Forces counterterrorism unit conducted the raid that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, touching off a high-stakes diplomatic crisis between the United States and Iraq.

U.S. military officials in Baghdad had no comment for the second day in a row, an unusual position for a command that typically releases information on combat operations within 24 hours.

The raid occurred at dawn Friday in the town of Janaja near Maliki's birthplace in the southern, mostly Shiite Muslim province of Karbala. Ali Abdulhussein Razak al Maliki, who was killed in the raid, was related to the prime minister and had close ties to his personal security detail, according to authorities in Karbala.

The incident puts an added strain on U.S.-Iraqi negotiations to draft a Status of Forces Agreement, a long-term security pact that will govern the conduct of U.S. forces in Iraq. Members of the Iraqi government and security forces said the raid only deepened their reluctance to sign any agreement that did not leave Iraqis with the biggest say on when and how combat operations are conducted.

The U.S. military handed Iraqi forces control of Karbala security in October 2007. By the end of 2007 the U.S. military had transferred nine of the country's 18 provinces to Iraqi control.

"We are afraid now of signing the long-term pact between Iraq and America because of such unjustified violations by the troops. Handing over security in provinces doesn't mean anything to the American troops," said Mohamed Hussein al Musawi, a senior Najaf-based member of the prime minister's Dawa Party. "We condemn these barbaric actions not only when they target a relative of Maliki's, but when any Iraqi is targeted in the same way."

...and:

As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration's latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war's costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military.

"America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs."

Is anyone in the media going to get off their knees in front of McCain long enough to ask him about this? Or are they going to continue to tell the American people that this delusional old man is the best choice to handle the situation in Iraq becuase he's capable of clapping his hands and saying, "I do believe! I do I do I DO!!!"

We did it a long time ago

Is "Hussein" the "Emily", "Jordan", "Jacob", "Amanda", or "Ashley" of 2008?

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.

Mr. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from a Kenyan father he barely knew, who was born a Muslim and died an atheist. But the name has become a political liability. Some critics on cable television talk shows dwell on it, while others, on blogs or in e-mail messages, use it to falsely assert that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or, more fantastically, a terrorist.

“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.

So like the residents of Billings, Mont., who reacted to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in 1993 with a townwide display of menorahs in their front windows, these supporters are brandishing the name themselves.

Deadbeat.

If you can't manage to pay your fucking property taxes, why should we trust you with the budget of an entire nation?

When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

So AFTER the story breaks the McCains pay the taxes? How difficult is it to call the tax assessor and give him/her the correct address to which to send the bills?

If the McCains can't handle owning eight houses, perhaps they ought to consider being more like the common people they're trying to pass as and sell a few of them.

Today's Worst Person in the World

Dumbass of the Day. Chickenshit Little Weasel of the Weekend. Moron of the Month.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present T. Boone Pickens:

T. Boone Pickens is not giving up his million dollars.

T. Boone Pickens (Photo: Fred Prouser/Reuters)That’s how much he had offered to pay anyone who could disprove any of the accusations the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election – attacks Mr. Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman, helped finance.

A group of Swift boat veterans sympathetic to Mr. Kerry sent Mr. Pickens a letter last week taking him up on the challenge. In 12 pages, plus a 42-page attachment of military records and other documents, they identified not just one but ten lies in the group’s campaign against Mr. Kerry. They offered to meet with him to provide Mr. Kerry’s journals and videotapes from Vietnam and a copy of his full military record certified by the Navy – a key demand of Mr. Pickens and veterans who believe Mr. Kerry lied about his service to win his military decorations.

Mr. Pickens replied with a one-page letter, thanking the veterans for their research and their service, but politely saying there had been a misunderstanding. “Key aspects of my offer of $1 million have not been accurately reported,” he wrote.

I guess Pickens is saving his money so he can offer it to whomever can prove that Barack Obama is not a Muslim terrorist.

Because if you remember, you weren't there

Not that I was, but you have to title it something.

Joe Cocker. With subtitles. After 40 years, we now know what the fuck he was talking about:

Next up: The Joe Cocker Bible Translation Project.

(via Hoffmania)

And he oughta know, he's the goddamn expert on sham elections

Pot, meet kettle:

Zimbabwe came under threat of further sanctions on Saturday as President Bush said the U.S. was working on new ways to punish longtime leader Robert Mugabe and his allies following the widely denounced presidential runoff election.

Earlier Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. plans to introduce a U.N. resolution as early as next week seeking tough measures against Zimbabwe.

"We will press for strong action by the United Nations, including an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and travel ban on regime officials," Bush said in a statement issued while he spent the weekend at Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

Too bad no one thought to do that here after December 12, 2000.

The Daily George

I wish it were going to be daily, just as I wish we could do the Daily Maron. But we can't. Deal with it.

But if you're feeling cynical today, let Unka George speak from you from the Great Beyond, where he and Molly Ivins and Richard Pryor are sitting down with Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and James Thurber knocking back a few (because there's no such thing as addiction in heaven) and laughing their asses off because we're still here in this God-forsaken level of reality dealing with this shit:

(h/t: Drifty the Great and Powerful)

Here we go again

It looks already like Florida is going to be an electoral mess again.

In 2000, Palm Beach County was the home of the infamous butterfly ballot which the Palm Beach Post concluded cost Al Gore the election in 2000.

With just over four months till the 2008 election, Palm Beach is having election problems again:

The votes for three precincts weren't counted on election night after Tuesday's special city commission election, prompting the candidates to ponder the reliability of the new optical-scan system as the county heads toward a busy election season culminating with the presidential vote in November.

Nearly 700 votes from three precincts - 14 percent of the total cast - were added into the final results released by the supervisor of elections office after the standard post-election audit Wednesday and Thursday.

The uncounted votes included those from Ibis Golf & Country Club and Riverwalk, two gated communities that produced the highest vote totals in the race. The third precinct was Ironhorse, another gated community.

Under the new totals, Kimberly Mitchell, who served as District 3 commissioner through March, remained the winner. But retired technology company executive Gregg Weiss vaulted into second place, and real estate attorney Rebecca Young finished third.

"The fact that they could not get this right in this small election gives me really grave concern about what's going to happen in a very important national election," Mitchell said. "That's a lot of votes to have not counted the first time."

The county primary election is Aug. 26, and the general election is Nov. 4.

Weiss said he is considering asking for a public inspection of all 4,792 ballots but will first try to talk with Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson about the issue. As of Friday evening, he hadn't received a return phone call, he said.

"Woo-hoo. I'm going to have to go out and celebrate tonight, I guess," he said, referring to his new second-place finish. "Are they sure they got them all?"

During the audit in the two days after the election, three cartridges containing vote totals were labeled "suspended," meaning their votes hadn't been counted on election night when all the cartridges were brought to a tabulation center to be "read" by vote-counting machines, said elections office spokeswoman Kathy Adams.

After the audit, they were read and the votes were added to the totals. The cartridges were secure and accounted for at all times, Adams said.

In the end, the system worked the way it was supposed to, she said. The results posted on the elections office Web site and on the county's cable TV channel are unofficial until after the audit, she noted.

"That's why it's marked unofficial, because when they do the audit, they find out if anything was not included," Adams said.

She said the office didn't know why the cartridges weren't read properly the first time. She said it was possible that one reader wasn't working properly and that all three cartridges were read by that reader.

"That's one of the things that they're researching now," she said. "That was the fortunate part of being able to have an election like this, before the primary."

The other fortunate thing is that it allows partisan election officials to come up with ways to change the counts in the post-election audit to produce the desired result.

Na Zdrowie, Glebe

Pierogi boiled $15.90Traditional Polish dumplings in creamy tomato and roasted capsicum saucePolish food is made for winter. This stodgy hearty fare is heavy with pork, pickles and potatoes.My second encounter with Polish cuisine saw me head to Na Zdrowie (pronounced na-zdro-vee-ah) in Glebe, a cosy restaurant in a converted terrace that seats 35 at a pinch. Stained pine furnishings abound, one

The forgotten terrorist attack that took place after 9/11

Funny how we'd all but forgotten about the anthrax envelopes that were received by various politicians and media figures in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. George W. Bush recently made a show of once again having interest in the apprehension of Osama Bin Laden as a means of salvaging his legacy, but frankly, I think that was just cover for the moment at the end of October when Bush lets Bin Laden out of his apartment in the White House basement. But the anthrax attacks are still an unsolved mystery -- or so goes the conventional wisdom.

Yesterday the Justice Department announced that it would pay Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who at one point was named as a "person of interest" in the case, $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit Hatfill had filed:

Dr. Hatfill, who worked at the Army’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., in the late 1990s, was the subject of a flood of news media coverage beginning in mid-2002, after television cameras showed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in biohazard suits searching his apartment near the Army base. He was later named a “person of interest” in the case by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking on national television.

In a news conference in August 2002, Dr. Hatfill tearfully denied that he had anything to do with the anthrax letters and said irresponsible news media coverage based on government leaks had destroyed his reputation.

Dr. Hatfill’s lawsuit, filed in 2003, accused F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials involved in the criminal investigation of the anthrax mailings of leaking information about him to the news media in violation of the Privacy Act. In order to prove their case, his lawyers took depositions from key F.B.I. investigators, senior officials and a number of reporters who had covered the investigation.

[snip]

The settlement called new attention to the fact that nearly seven years after the toxic letters were mailed, killing five people and sickening at least 17 others, the case has not been solved.

A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said in a statement that the government admitted no liability but decided settlement was “in the best interest of the United States.”

“The government remains resolute in its investigation into the anthrax attacks, which killed five individuals and sickened others after lethal anthrax powder was sent through the United States mail,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.

An F.B.I. spokesman, Jason Pack, said the anthrax investigation “is one of the largest and most complex investigations ever conducted by law enforcement” and is currently being pursued by more than 20 agents of the F.B.I. and the Postal Inspection Service.

“Solving this case is a top priority for the F.B.I. and for the family members of the victims who were killed,” Mr. Pack said.

But Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat whose district was the site of a postal box believed to have been used in the attacks, said he would press Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., for more answers about the status of the case.

“As today’s settlement announcement confirms, this case was botched from the very beginning,” Mr. Holt said. “The F.B.I. did a poor job of collecting evidence, and then inappropriately focused on one individual as a suspect for too long, developing an erroneous theory of the case that has led to this very expensive dead end.”

A top priority, eh? After nearly seven years? I don't think so.

You don't have to fashion a fedora out of Reynolds Wrap to believe that this so-called "investigation" stinks to high heaven. Especially when we look back now at seven years of the Bush Administration doing what it can to jettison those who would dare look at what it is doing -- firing U.S. prosecutors, outing CIA non-official cover operatives, putting pressure on news outlets to squelch stories -- it becomes clear that Dr. Hatfill was simply a red herring to draw attention away from something else.

If we look at who received the letters, you'd have to be an idiot to not ask any questions and to still believe that there is some Tim McVeigh-type out there that the government has not yet apprehended. After all, while there have been scares dince then, there have been no further large-scale anthrax mailings since that one episode following 9/11. But once again, here are the recipients of the anthrax letters in 2001:

1. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Daschle's letter was opened by an aide.
   
2. Democratic Senator and head of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy. Leahy's letter had been misdirected to the State Department and had been opened by a postal worker.
   
3. Robert Stevens, photo editor at the National Enquirer. A mailroom clerk named Ernesto Blanco was also sickened. The anthrax envelope was addressed to "Photo Editor", and was received in October 2001 after the Enquirer had run an article and this photograph of a falling-down-drunk Jenna Bush the previous August..
   
4. The offices of The New York Post, which would seem to be an unlikely target, were it not for these headline stories about the Bush twins that had appeared during 2001:
   
   

   
   BOOZING BUSH TWIN NEARLY IN THE CLEAR
   Deborah Orin; New York Post; Sep 7, 2001; pg. 015
   
   BUSH TWINS' BOOZE SERVER OFF THE HOOK
   AP; New York Post; Jun 24, 2001; pg. 012
   
   BUSTED BUSH BABES MAKE DIFFERENT BOOZE PLEAS
   MARILYN RAUBER Post Correspondent; New York Post; Jun 9, 2001; pg. 002
   
   REIN IN THESE BUSH LEAGUERS
   LINDA STASI; New York Post; Jun 3, 2001; pg. 002
   
   DOUBLE SHOT: BUSH TWINS BOTH NAILED
   Jordan Smith in Austin, Texas and Deborah Orin in Washington; New York Post; Jun 1, 2001; pg. 005
   
   JENNA COMES 'CLEAN': BEER-BUST BUSH KID FACES GARBAGE DUTY
   Clemente Lisi; New York Post; May 17, 2001; pg. 003
   
   DELAY IN JENNA'S BREW-HAHA
   Post Wire Services; New York Post; May 3, 2001; pg. 026
   
   W'S FATHERLY ADVICE: DON'T YOU DARE MISTREAT MY DAUGHTERS
   Deborah Orin Bureau Chief; New York Post; Jan 19, 2001; pg. 008W.'S
   Abstract: [Bush]'s warning came a day after The Post revealed that Comedy Central is doing a hasty retreat from plans to paint the Bush twins as "hot and sexy" and maybe lesbians in a new sitcom satirizing the first family.
   

   
   
5. NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw. Brokaw's letter was opened by Erin O'Connor, an assistant to Brokaw. O'Connor developed cutaneous anthrax.
   
6. Individuals who were at ABC and CBS headquarters also developed cutaneous anthrax.
   

The so-called USA PATRIOT Act, which was the first step towards the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was signed into law by George W. Bush on October 26, 2001.

When the many conspiracy theories related to the 9/11 attacks are brought up, someone always invokes Occam's Razor -- that the simplest answer is the best.

In the case of the anthrax attacks, the U.S. government has spent seven years chasing blind alleys and dead ends, trying to find someone who can be said to have access to weapons-grade anthrax and still be an Islamic terrorist. In the case of the anthrax attacks, the simplest answer points to an intimidation job by the Bush Administration. We've seen for seven years how intimidation works. It's silenced the media and everyone else who knows anything about the chicanery of the gang of thugs and thieves who hijacked our government on December 12, 2000. Sending the military-grade equivalent of a dead fish to those who would, or have already, crossed the Bush Administration is perfectly in character.

Watching one's retirement savings disappear

I know it's fashionable for younger people to blame the baby boomers for everything and to think that we're going to somehow be the beneficiaries of huge amounts of cash upon "retirement" after spending our adult lives buying SUVs and McMansions (never mind the reality that in my neighborhood, the boomers are driving Hyundai Accents and Civics and Corollas, while the younger people with little kids are still steaming around in ocean liners on wheels). But for most of us, that's not the reality.

I'm not going to say I did everything right. I moved out of my parents' house a year after graduating college instead of staying home and socking away what little was left after my meager retail management training program salary. Then I insisted on working in glamour industries, toiling as essentially a secretary in an ad agency and a major publishing company before deciding to "sell out" and going to work at Standard & Poor's in 1983. It really wasn't until I was well into my 30's that I was able to put away any kind of significant money for retirement. Today I put away over 10% of my pay and I receive a preposterously generous employer match. My account contains a good balance of stocks and bonds, along with a fixed income component. And almost every penny of both that I have put in this year has disappeared into the disaster that is the United States financial markets.

I know about investing for the long-term, but when you look at long-term fundamentals for this country, they look so bleak that it's hard to blame people for wondering why they should bother investing for future gain when it seems so unlikely that there will be any gain. My long-term timeframe suddenly isn't so long anymore, and it's hard to have any kind of optimism that this mess the Republicans (with the help of spineless, capitulating, corporate whore Democrats) have put us into is going to end in time for my money to not have gone down an empty hole.

Steven Pearlstein, in today's Washington Post:

This thing's going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We're caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of.

Only this will be a different kind of recession -- a recession with an overlay of inflation. That combo puts the Federal Reserve in a Catch-22 -- whatever it does to solve one problem only makes the other worse. Emerging from a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials signaled that further recession-fighting rate cuts are unlikely and that their next move will be to raise rates to contain inflationary expectations.

Since last June, we've seen a fairly consistent pattern to the economic mood swings. Every three months or so, there's a round of bad news about housing, followed by warnings of more bank write-offs and then a string of disappointing corporate earnings reports. Eventually, things stabilize and there are hints that the worst may be behind us. Stocks regain some of their lost ground, bonds fall and then -- bam -- the whole cycle starts again.

It was only in November that the Dow had recovered from the panicked summer sell-off and hit a record, just above 14,000. By March, it had fallen below 12,000. By May, it climbed above 13,000. Now it's heading for a new floor at 11,000. Officially, that's bear market territory. We'll be lucky if that's the floor.

In explaining why that second-half rebound never occurred, the Fed and the Treasury and the Wall Street machers will say that nobody could have foreseen $140 a barrel oil. As excuses go, blaming it on an oil shock is a hardy perennial. That's what Jimmy Carter and Fed Chairman Arthur Burns did in the late '70s, and what George H.W. Bush and Alan Greenspan did in the early '90s. Don't believe it.

More here.

The real estate crash has hardly even started. Diana Olick at CNBC reports that realtors are telling her that fully a third of sales are distressed properties -- short sales and bank-owned properties.

Here in Bergen County, over a quarter of recent foreclosures have higher judgments than the average purchase price, which means that a good portion of the hammering and nailing and contractor signs and gourmet kitchens with granite countertops that was going on in my vicinity during the last five years and the multiple SUVs in the newly-expanded paver stone driveways was paid for with equity loans taken at the time homes were purchased -- betting on huge price increases in perpetuity.

Houses in my neighborhood are selling once they reach the right price, but so far it looks like many sellers are still not ready to admit that they missed the boat. Not far from where I live, on a main road, is a house very similar to mine, except that it appears NOTHING has EVER been done to it. It started out at peak 2005 price about six months ago, and it's still sitting at a price that's been reduced by over $50,000 -- and is still probably around $30,000 overpriced. One spec house -- a McMansion, of course -- has been on the market for almost a year, and the photos taken by the realtor the builder is now using show a house with bare sheetrock -- not even a coat of primer on the walls. It's listed at close to a million and a half -- still at the original listing price. It has no landscaping and no driveway and it's being sold as having custom landscaping and granite countertops in the kitchen.

And this is an area that hasn't been hard hit yet. But nationwide, a second round of option ARMs is resetting early next year, and then, my friends (as John McCain would say), we are really going to see the feces hit the fan.

It's hard to feel sorry for the very people who would have looked down their noses at me for my cabinet reface job and my refusal to take out a loan to get the "dream" kitchen I would have really wanted -- and are going to find themselves underwater in six months if they aren't already. The problem is that their folly is going to hit everyone around them. It hits in neighborhoods where houses that look as if they were nicely maintained before the bank took them are now boarded up -- affecting the neighborhoods around them. It hits in yesterday's 300-plus-point drop in the Dow, because people are either overextended or afraid that no matter how careful they've been, it's all going to come crashing down around their heads.

Which brings us back to disappearing retirement savings. It's one thing to face that you no longer live in a house worth almost a half million dollars. More than once I've sat in my kitchen with the half-finished reface job and the harvest gold wall oven and the ugly 1970's yellow geometric sheet vinyl floor and said, "No way is this a half-million dollar house." But when we've heard for years from politicians and citizens saying that people who haven't saved enough have no one but themselves to blame, at the same time as we ARE doing what we're supposed to -- foregoing short-term gratification for long-term security -- and seeing the money we're trying to put away for the future disappear as if we were lighting a match to it, it's difficult to judge others who have wanted to at least see trinkets as tangible evidence that they once had cash.

But when the president does, it is NOT appeasement...as long as the president's name is "George W. Bush"

I hate to rag on George Bush too much about the successful negotiations with North Korea about that country's nuclear program, because it's probably the only thing in his entire misbegotten administration that he's gotten right. But where at one time I would have been obliged, however grudgingly, to congratulate the administration on a job well done, Bush's appalling comments about appeasement just a few weeks ago mean that we have to point out his hypocrisy and that of his entire administration.

Or we could just let Keith Olbermann do it:

Note in particular the condescension with which Bush points out the strengths of negotiation -- as if he'd just discovered something previously unknown to anyone.

Campaign 2008: Uppity Negro™ Watch

I've deliberately stayed away from the petty bullshit foofarah over what Republicans say is the Obama campaign's "illegal" use of the "presidential seal" in a campaign logo, mostly because I haven't wanted to give this particular wingnut snit any more daylight than it already has, especially when it has an undertone of "Who does that boy (sic) think he is?"

As the great Skippy found at Mark Nickolas' blog, the Republicans are not above using the official seal to rake in some bucks.

But more than that, Skippy decided to take the racist suckers of the phallus of John McCain to task for their jumping on the "arrogant" meme that only seems like arrogance when it's done by a black Democrat with the temerity to think he can join the Ultimate Old White Guys' Club.

He has more intestinal fortitude than I do.

Thursday Night Funny

Gilda Radner and Madeline Kahn....together. Sheer perfection.

YEE-HAH!!!

Well, our good friend and resident troll Barry is a happy man tonight, because today the Supreme Court overturned 230 years of precedent and decided that the entire U.S. ought to be just like the Wild, Wild Old West -- where everyone's packing heat, and everyone can just shoot whomever and whatever they want.

But the Bush Administration isn't going to be satisfied with just the overturning of Washington, DC's handgun ban. No, the pencil-dicks in the Bush Administration want everyone to be packing heat in the country's National Parks, so that everyone can hunt for bears -- or stray tourists:

The Bush Administration proposed a repeal of the current law governing firearms in national parks in favor of new regulations that would allow for people to carry loaded, concealed weapons into the parks. This move would increase poaching in the parks, according to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

PEER released a statement Thursday arguing against the proposed change for its failure to consider environmental concerns. The organization blamed the proposal on the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

"The Bush administration proposed the rules in response to a National Rifle Association campaign that threatened congressional repeal of the park service rules," it said. "The NRA has made no secret of its desire to increase hunting within national parks."

The right sure does love its guns. Funny how the Second Amendment is the only one they really care about. Funny how they have they don't care about the government sweeping up all phone calls and internet activity, but take away a big stick that shoots with power and they get their....panties....in a twist.

It's because Tweety and Susan Molinari and Joe Scarborough keep telling them he's a maverick

You'd think that when it came to an issue as important as the right to control your own body -- whether it's carrying a fetus to term or even preventing an unwanted pregnancy, women would pay more attention not even to the personal views of candidates, but to the policies they hope to enact and the people they plan to hire to enact them.

So it's astonishing that so many women have fallen for the "maverick" meme when it comes to John McCain, who has always been a staunch doctrinaire conservative, including on women's issues. In the past, McCain was able to get away with it simply by virtue of not sounding utterly batshit crazy in thrall to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, but even that has fallen by the wayside this year.

Sorry, ladies, but it makes us women look like idiots when you're this ill-informed about something this important to your life. As the NARAL study referenced in this Amy Sullivan column notes, we've got our work cut out for us:

The NARAL survey found that when pro-choice women are told that McCain believes the Roe v. Wade decision should be overturned, their support for him drops substantially. Among pro-choice independent women, who are already more inclined to back Obama, information about the two candidates' abortion positions improves Obama's edge from 53-35 to 66-26, for a net gain of 22 percentage points. Even pro-choice Republican women shift their support after hearing about McCain's opposition to Roe: 76% initially say they will vote for McCain in November, but that number drops to 63%.


The problem for Democrats is that most voters don't sit through phone calls with pollsters walking them through the respective positions of the two nominees. That sets up a messaging battle, and it's one Republicans enter from a position of strength. In the 35 years since the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, abortion has reigned as the single most controversial issue in American politics. Nevertheless, GOP presidential candidates have demonstrated a remarkable ability to strike a politically successful balance, quietly reassuring their conservative base of their anti-abortion commitment while publicly hewing to language that appeals to the pro-choice majority.


While every Republican party platform since 1976 has called for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in all cases, the men who have run on those platforms have been careful to use more measured language. George W. Bush's frequent references to "the culture of life" fit that mold, borrowing a phrase made famous by Pope John Paul II that resonated with social conservatives but sounded innocuous to most pro-choice voters. When pressed in presidential debates, Bush even refused to say whether he wanted to see Roe overturned, choosing instead to talk about the importance of "changing hearts" about abortion.


On that score, McCain has gone further than Bush. Although McCain has a solid record of supporting abortion restrictions in the Senate, he has felt pressure to articulate that position - and prove his conservative bona fides - because of his strained relationship with religious conservatives. Under questioning from ABC's George Stephanopoulos, McCain said that he supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and that he believed Roe should be overturned, a position he opposed in 2000 when he came under attack from pro-life activists during the GOP primaries. And not long after he clinched the nomination in the spring of 2008, McCain gave a speech on judicial philosophy that was meant to put to rest doubts on the right about whether he would appoint pro-life judges.


But McCain's more traditional abortion rhetoric is leavened by his carefully maintained political brand as a "maverick" politician. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL, believes that has led many voters to make incorrect assumptions about McCain's views on abortion and is one reason he is now courting pro-choice women, particularly Hillary Clinton's supporters. "People think that he's a maverick and that must mean that he's a moderate," Keenan says. "And they come to the conclusion that if you're a moderate, you must be pro-choice."

So here at B@B, we're going to do our part to expose John McCain's record on women's right to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term:

1. Voted YES on barring HHS grants to organizations that perform abortions. (Oct 2007)
   
2. Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
   
3. Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions (sic) except for maternal life. (Mar 2003) (I guess that not condemning women to die constitutes a pro-choice record to some people)
   
4. Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions. (Jun 2000) (I guess denying women who serve their country basic medical care is considered pro-choice to some people.)
   
5. Voted YES on banning partial birth (sic) abortions. (Oct 1999) (I guess having politicians overruling women and their doctors is considered pro-choice to some people.)
   

Here's John McCain promising to appoint Supreme Court Justices that WILL overturn Roe v. Wade, thus ensuring that women in the Bible Belt, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, will be subject to the James Dobson/John Hagee view of abortion as part of their health care options:

The only area in which McCain parts company from the Christofascist Zombie Brigade is in the area of embryonic stem-cell research -- which means that he not only thinks the government has the right to control women's bodies on the grounds that a fetus is a human being,but he's also a fucking hypocrite about it.

His record on contraception is no better. In 2005, he voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives, and this is his embarrassing exchange with a reporter in March 2007 about the use of condoms to stop HIV transmission, in which he invokes the lunatic Tom Coburn as his go-to guy on such issues:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”
Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

He should be embarrassed -- and ashamed of himself.

In 2004, McCain voted NO on legislation to improve the availability of contraceptives for women and to require insurance coverage of prescription birth control. Most insurance plans already cover Viagra, so I'm not sure who all these men are supposed to be fucking, unless it's about spreading their seed far and wide and knocking up as many women as possible.

McCain has dog-whistled to the right even on Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that declared that banning the use of contraception by married couples was unconstitutional and which is the next target of the Christofascists.

Annie Newman at RH Reality Check notes:

According to Medical News Today, McCain, assuaging the conservative crowd in attendance said that he would appoint conservative justices to the bench and "criticized justices for using the words ‘penumbras' and ‘emanations'." Those just happen to be two words used in the famous Griswold decision to reason that marriage fell within a zone of privacy (specifically that marriage fell under a "penumbra" of privacy and therefore married couples decision to use contraception was a private matter, not to be regulated by the government).

McCain's coded language around reproductive rights needs to be called out. With the anti-choice advocacy community renewing their focus on contraception as murder and state ballot campaigns that seek to define a fertilized human egg as a person, birth control is under very real attack.

And just for good measure, he's an asshole on pay equity as well. In April he skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay act, saying that the problem with pay inequity is simply that women need more "education and training."

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know what McCain's voting record is; it's all right out there for anyone to see. So perhaps those women still deluding themselves that John McCain is a moderate ought to stop listening to talking heads on TV invoking "Maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick maverick" over and over and over again and look at whom they're supporting.

Big Oil Returns to Iraq...Mission Accomplished!

Just as DINO Joe Lieberman (D-CT,) is clearly not gonna support his party's candidate for President; neither will he be supporting democratic congressional candidate, Jim Himes, to replace Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT.)

Best buddies, Shays and Lieberman, have visited Iraq together some 20 times, and held tight to their shared rosy, pro-war stance until just before the '06 elections, when they both began to waffle and turn, only to change back once they assured themselves that their positions were safe...if only temporarily. They are sharing chairmanship of McCain's presidential campaign's CT "leadership team," and from the way that the two of them have been acting, they expect positions in the McCain cabinet. Its too bad that CT voters were so short sighted, misled, and plain old terrified of the unknown, to vote these guys out. Its too bad also that the two of these crony's can hold hands while saluting their leader, in the name of bipartisanship, which is really just shared neocon vision by any other name. They are sure of the fact that we will be "victorious" in Iraq (which means...what?) and don't care how long it takes or how many die. Lip service paid to bringing troops home is just that; lip service. But what is going on is more insidious than just one turncoat and his brown-nose buddy; its about the movement to actually take over the country while we all slumber in our denial. Scared of the "terra," and worried of "losing" or this idea of "cut and run," I doubt that most people could explain what any of that means in real terms or what we are doing there int eh first place. They can, however, explain how hard day to day life has become in this country and most of what people talk about having changed can be attributed directly to this administration and this war.

The Stamford Advocate, my local paper, today had a great letter about Christopher Shays and his praise of the new big oil deals, by one Scott Kimmitch. What struck me was not the facts about Shays and how dirty he is, because its clear or not to the individuals in this state who likely like Shays because of his manner or his smooth lies, but his clear definition of fascism, which is something that every person in this country needs to understand:

Handing out no-bid contracts to big oil companies headquartered in the two countries whose leaders conspired to mislead their peoples into a criminal war sends the wrong message to the world, particularly if you understand the word "fascist." Fascism is the seamless merger of corporations with national leadership, producing a belligerent nationalism accompanied by suppression of citizens' rights.

Fascism happens when the corporations call the shots and the government connives to let them do it. Why not let oil companies around the world submit bids to Maliki's government and let it work the way private enterprise is supposed to work? Why let our government put pressure on Iraq in the name of corporate favorites?

I actually read this at the local firehouse while a bunch of the guys were taking a CPR refresher exam, and I managed to find a highlighter and highlight it, leaving it on the desk so that they would find and read it. Alot of them are not going to vote because they feel so burned by the system, and lied to by their party. I can only quote facts, because the emotional part is tied up in some of their own service in Viet Nam, and having to face what that war was for...and really, the facts are what you need if you're anyone who cares about the lives of soldiers and the future of the young people of this country.

So this is what its come to. Even if much of this were only partly true, it would be worth taking a good hard look at. You can say that we don't have a Hitler leading that march, and maybe Bush is in his lame term, but that doesn't mean that a Hitler doesn't appear out of this...a deranged and mentally damaged man who's got a clearer and better plan for the victory of the country...someone like McCain, if he weren't so bat-shit crazy...or, maybe somebody pulling a McCain's puppet strings as if he were say, a George W. with a Cheney behind him...
I-m not saying that McCain has a chance, because I don't think that he does, but if it all works out, we will have spent 8 years as close as any of us should ever be to fascist rule. This is what I call a close call...and if the republicans were somehow able to pull a reasonable candidate out of their asses we would be in shit trouble, because Americans are uneducated and complacent.



To reiterate: American big oil corporations being able to take back Iraq (...help them with their oil problem, perhaps?) is not what we went there for. We were gonna help them run the oil for the people and then the rebuilding and the war would pay for itself...remember? For the American Government to allow our big oil corporations in there no-bid, without a parliamentary decision on how they want to structure this deal is to go back to the days before Saddam Hussein kicked out the western players and nationalized the country's oil. For the US to put in place the exact same players from the deal before the nationalization has a damning sort of scent to it...like, we went in there to spread democracy? Capitalism? And now they want us to believe that the Iraqis "need" western modernization and expertise in order to make money on their oil? (Like they need sustained electricity still, and buildings without failing plumbing systems, because our private corporations are so, so, great at building infrastructure!) They couldn't ask anyone else who is maybe less conflicted in their interest? Forget those other countries who were shut out of the bidding...This is OUR corporate oil...maybe we'll get a little trickle down from it...in theory, we could; but in truth we won't...And don't expect the Iraqi people to benefit from this either.

So, this is the face of fascism, and it really makes me sick. I'm sure that the Rovian machine can drum up enough outrage and anger to make half of all Americans believe that our corporations deserve this because we've done so much "work" over there, but lets not forget that we broke it...we bought it...and its ours to fix, not gut of its natural resources. And with such an unstable leadership there, I can imagine that the contracts will be long...
So, did we go there for oil? Yeah...we did.
And Chris Shays, my Congressman, is PROUD of the American oil companies that will put themselves in danger's way (but, oh, is it lucrative!...yes it is...)
It will take another strongman dictator to nationalize the oil again...till then, I wonder how much of that profit is gonna go to rebuilding the country? How much of it is gonna go to huge bonuses for CEO's and other players? And will the price of oil drop substantially again? Why should it?
Mission accomplished!

c/p RIPCoco

Buh...buh...buh...but he's a MAVERICK!!

He's also a psychotic nutcase:

On June 20, 1996, Senator John McCain allegedly assaulted a family member of a Vietnam War prisoner of war (POW) who was missing in action (MIA), as a group of about 15 family members of POW/MIAs watched in astonishment. Within about one month, five ethics complaints had been filed with the Senate Ethics Committee by five eyewitnesses. But the Senate Ethics Committee refused to investigate the matter.

According to eyewitness Carol Hrdlicka, wife of Vietnam War POW/MIA air force pilot Col. David Hrdlicka, the group had been waiting in the hall of the Russell Office Building in Washington, D.C. for McCain to come out of an office in order to hand deliver letters asking him to forego an amendment to the Missing Service Personnel Act (MSPA) of 2005. The MSPA had been signed into law in February 1996 as part of the Defense Authorization Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-106). This law, which updated a 1942 law, had been a major victory for the families of POW/MIAs who worked tirelessly to get it through Congress.

The MSPA required the Pentagon to beef up its resources to find and rescue missing service personnel in a timely manner. For instance, it required the filing of reports on missing persons within 48 hours. Among other substantive provisions, it also criminalized withholding information from the families of POWs by broadly stipulating that "any person who knowingly and willfully withholds from the personnel file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person shall be fined as provided in title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." McCain's amendment eviscerated these new changes. For instance, it increased the reporting time to 10 days, and it deleted entirely the stated provision penalizing the withholding of information.

These family members of POW/MIAs had come to speak with McCain to try to convince him to leave the law alone. Mrs. Hrdlicka gives the following description of what happened:

When he [McCain] realized who we were, his face turned red and he became enraged. He would not accept the letters we had brought, he burst through our group assaulting the niece of Jane Duke Gaylor, mother of a MIA. I followed Senator McCain down the hall asking that he leave the legislation alone and all the while he is denying that he knew anything about the Missing Personnel Act. ...As we reached the elevator he said to me that I didn't know what he had been through ... I then stated I understood what he had been through and David Hrdlicka was still going through it. I had the capture picture of my husband and tried to show the picture to him but he would not look at it. ...The elevator arrived and Senator McCain quickly jumped in -- that ended our conversation. After this incident we went to the Capitol Police and filed a report. We also sent complaints to the ethics committee on the Senator's behavior.

"He went from a smiling, congenial, happy face to a beet red, totally enraged face in an instant," she said. "I have never seen a senator act in this way. We were all dumbfounded how this happened. He threw his arm up, and she goes flying and Jane [who was in a wheelchair] gets pushed aside as he brushes by her. All I see is people flying and I'm behind him [McCain]... This was assault."

This is the man the media wants to see in the White House. This is the one they're calling an "independent" and a "maverick." The press has been bought off by some kind words and barbecued ribs, and in return they're going to do whatever is necessary to put an even more dangerous man than George W. Bush into the White House.

Sleep well, everyone.