Tag: John McCain

If you wanna’ see just how ridiculous today’s GOP party is


just look here and here.

Twenty-seven Republican senators voted with Democrats on Oct. 16 to lift the debt ceiling and avert a catastrophic default. And each one of those 27 senators voted Tuesday to “disapprove” of their own votes. (It’s called having your cake and eating it too)

I was surprised to see what I thought would be moderate Republicans on the list of those engaged in this act of senility.  John McCain, Lamar Alexandar, Lindsay Graham?!?!?  What a wasted party.

The Right to bear arms and murder people in the streets is an exclusively white right no matter how hard Ted Cruz tries to paint it as beneficial to African-Americans but to assert that to Trayvon Martin’s mother is taking chutzpah to a whole other level.  What Stand Your Ground insures is ‘blacks do not benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law, but it is pretty obvious that since the law was passed in 2005, those who kill blacks do. In Florida, “Stand Your Ground” has become a license to kill people of color.’

 

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The Muhammad Morsi dilemma


MorsiII

The Morsi government was doomed to fail before it even began.  No matter what his government did, the Mubarak loyalists and the Army conspired very early on to depose him at a time and method convenient to them.  Nothing could have been done to avert that outcome.  There are international forces that benefited from the military coup and the Obama administration played both sides against the middle as is usually the case for America, but the origin of this coup was the banks of the Nile and it was propagated  by Egyptians  and perhaps financed with a little help from their friends in the Middle East and beyond.

Before the overthrow could be accomplished, Morsi first had to be properly dehumanized and linked with the most infamous criminals known to man and with the Egyptian propaganda machine in full swing it was an easy task

Mr Kholy (Egypt’s ambassador to Britain)  compared the one-year rule of Mr Morsi to the Islamist takeover of the Iranian state after the 1979 revolution and said that, like Nazism, the Muslim Brotherhood ideology sought to dominate Egyptian society.

“Morsi was elected president and held office for one year but in that time he tried to make everything Muslim Brotherhood controlled. Egyptian culture over 5,000 years is a mix of religions and civilisations in which the Islamic religion is one ingredient of the Egyptian character,” he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood are like a Nazi group that demand that everything changes and people (sic) everything to their way.”

…and with code words like Nazi, it was on for the military coup and over for the Morsi government.  After using terms meant to denigrate the Morsi government, machinations were put in place to ensure the public was on board as well with manufactured crisis designed to turn Egyptians against the government they voted into office

Throughout the month of June the media onslaught on Morsi’s government not only continued to blame it for all the ills afflicting Egyptian society, but also intensified as three particular problems were highlighted: the deterioration in security, frequent power outages that lasted hours and affected not only residential but also industrial areas, and shortages of fuel, causing hours long lines at gas stations.

gasEgypt has 2480 gas stations, with about 400 stations run by the government. The other two thousand stations are owned privately by business tycoons who were given these licenses during the Mubarak era because they were close to the regime and considered very loyal. Morsi’s government asserted that each station received its share and that there was no reason for the shortages. In fact, a few days before he was deposed Morsi warned gas station owners he’d revoke their licences if they refused to provide their customers with fuel. Khalid Al-Shami, a youth activist who was with the opposition until the military coup, exposed the plot when he announced in public that the handful of owners of the privately-run gas stations conspired to create the manufactured fuel shortage crisis in order to build public discontent against Morsi. The best evidence that the problem of fuel shortage was manufactured is that it evaporated overnight. Since the moment Morsi was deposed there has been no fuel shortage.

As for the security deterioration and electricity cuts, the conspiracy was deeper. The police which refused to electricity problemsprotect entire neighborhoods during Morsi’s rule has returned back in full force. Criminals and thugs who terrorized people in the streets are back under control by the same Mubarak-era security apparatus, except for the areas where Morsi’s supporters demonstrate. Electricity outages that lasted for hours every day in almost every neighborhood have disappeared overnight. The mystery of solving these two intractable problems were uncovered this week. Out of the thirty-five member cabinet chosen by the military, eight were retained including the Interior Minister in charge of the police and the Minister of Electricity. One would assume that the first ministers to be sacked by the post-coup government would be those whom the public complained about their incompetence. The opposition who called for dismissing these ministers were now hailing them and cheering their retention. In short, many public officials who professed loyalty to the hapless president were actually undermining his rule all along, while the opposition accused him of packing the government with MB loyalists.

Egyptian opposition even borrowed a page from the American Tea Party movement with rhetoric that was as far fetched as any used by American #DemonicGOPers  designed to incite animus against the Morsi government in ways that manufactured crisis could never accomplish.  At a time when our Tea Party and its strategy is becoming more and more apparent and on the wane in America, it seems to have found a home in Egypt and her conspiracists.  In ways that probably would make FoxNews blush, Egyptian Tea Party/military loyalists spout theories that come from the far reaches of the universe yet have no basis in reality

Readers of Egypt’s main state-run newspaper this week were treated to a startling expose. Splashed atop al Ahram’s front page was trumpeted how security forces smashed a plot by the Muslim Brotherhood, the United States and Palestinian Islamists to foment the secession of northern Egypt.

“A new conspiracy to shake stability,” the red-ink headline screamed of the scheme allegedly overseen by U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson and Khairat al-Shater, a millionaire businessman who is among dozens of Brotherhood leaders swept into jail in recent weeks.

Media commentaries span the comedic to the preposterous. A radio host griped that a more than 2-week-old nationwide curfew is forcing husbands to spend more time cooped up at night with their wives, while a former Supreme Court justice asserted on state-run television that President Barack Obama’s brother is a Brotherhood member. Obama and the MB

An article in the pro-army Al Youm Al Sabaa newspaper alleged that Shater, the Brotherhood’s chief political strategist, ran an arms smuggling racket with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who enraged many Egyptians when he tried to broker a deal between Morsi and the army.

Television channels loop slick anti-Brotherhood video mash-ups. They contrast shots of long-bearded Morsi protesters firing guns or contorting their faces as they screech abuses with scenes of unarmed, flag-waving anti-Morsi protesters, police funerals and troops on maneuvers. Patriotic soundtracks hail Egypt’s ancient history and the military’s martial prowess.  (against unarmed civilians but certainly not against the Israeli army.)

People like  Mr. Naguib Sawiris who took his  inspiration from American politicians and media pundits in exemplary fasion managed a media blitz nothing short of incendiary and blatantly fallacious….

On July 26, a cable news host leaned across his desk, stared into the camera and let his audience in on what he believed was the Obama administration’s deepest, darkest secret. “The issue is not whether Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or not,” he declared. “The issue is that it is a fact that Obama used the help of the Muslim Brotherhood in his administration.”

Reading from notes in a tone of total omniscience, the host began to name names. He cited six figures, all Muslim American activists or intellectuals, accusing them of operating a Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cell inside the White House. They were Mazen Asbahi, Arif Ali Khan, Eboo Patel, Salam Marayati, and Mohamed Elibiary.

“Write these names down,” the host told his audience, “look them up during the break and when I come back let me know if what I say is right or wrong.”

Though he sounded like Glenn Beck or any other Tea Party-style Islamophobe, the host was not American and did not even speak English. He was Yousef El-Hosseini, a popular and famously reactionary personality on the private Egyptian cable network, ONTV. Founded by Egypt’s wealthiest man, Naguib Sawiris, a key financial backer of the forces behind the overthrow of the country’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, ONTV has emerged as one of the country’s central instruments for spreading pro-military propaganda.

 With such proclamations, news to the contrary was effectively stifled in ways that only happen under military dictatorships ushered in by military coups. How could you not support a takeover that was inspired by threats of foreign intervention in your country’s domestic affairs?   Opponents of the military coup and voices of opposition were silenced and persecuted and published dissent to the military’s actions was not tolerated.

Journalists have been killed, arrested and attacked since the Egyptian army began a campaign of repression in the country. On Sunday, the pattern of harassment continued, as three employees of Al Jazeera English were deported.

“Since 3 July, a total of five journalists have been killed, 80 journalists have been arbitrarily detained (with seven still held) and at least 40 news providers have been physically attacked by the police or by pro-Morsi or pro-army demonstrators,” RWB wrote. It called the killings “without precedent in the country’s contemporary history.”

Next Morsi’s opponents, some of them officials in the Morsi government had to manufacture economic and political crisis to make it seem  Egypt was on the verge of immediate demise …..

The streets seethe with protests and government ministers are on the run or in jail, but since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, life has somehow gotten better for many people across Egypt: Gas lines have disappeared, power cuts have stopped and the police have returned to the street.

The apparently miraculous end to the crippling energy shortages, and the re-emergence of the police, seems to show that the legions of personnel left in place after former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011 played a significant role — intentionally or not — in undermining the overall quality of life under the Islamist administration of Mr. Morsi.

And as the interim government struggles to unite a divided nation, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mr. Morsi’s supporters say the sudden turnaround proves that their opponents conspired to make Mr. Morsi fail. Not only did police officers seem to disappear, but the state agencies responsible for providing electricity and ensuring gas supplies failed so fundamentally that gas lines and rolling blackouts fed widespread anger and frustration.

Working behind the scenes, members of the old establishment, some of them close to Mr. Mubarak and the country’s top generals, also helped finance, advise and organize those determined to topple the Islamist leadership, including Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire and an outspoken foe of the Brotherhood….

MB HQThere can be no doubt that what took place in Egypt was a military coup, despite America’s reluctance to call it that.  I’ve read words such as naive to describe Morsi’s attitude to those who opposed him but realizing the political intransigence he faced and the extent to which the tentacles of the Mubarak regime reached in Egyptian society (notice how quickly Mubarak was released from prison after the military took power) Morsi’s slow and steady approach, along with missteps that ANYONE doing what he had to do would make, made it all but impossible for him to succeed.  To say he was set up to fail, that his election took place only to be overturned is precisely what his detractors, opponents wanted to happen and it was brilliantly executed.  A democratically elected government, replacing a 30 year dictatorship was overthrown by a military coup to the applause of all but those in the ruling party that Morsi represented and it was done with many of the same tactics employed by American political opposition that the American government which supported the Egyptian coup is fighting.  In other words, Obama has given his blessings to the military coup, despite what the Egyptian military said in an attempt to justify their actions…knowing full well Egyptian opposition was made up of people and tactics that are stalling his (Obama’s) government and the economic recovery he so desperately needs. If you say politics makes strange bedfellows, you only need to look at Egyptian/Middle Eastern politics to come to that realization.  Obama worked with the Egyptian forces that are his opponents back home in America for the illegal overthrow of an elected government.  He, Obama, now faces those same forces of obstructionism while he tries to make a case to attack a country that has always been an opponent of American interests in the Middle East and a new found opponent of Egypt.  It is bizarre, unsettling  and counterproductive to American interests, and worst of all typical of how things are done in that part of the world.  Go figure…..

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GOP double speak can make your head spin


When I first read that John McCain, along with Lindsey Graham who had been sent by President Obama to Egypt saidHead-Spinning

We have said we share the democratic aspirations and criticism of the Morsi government that led millions of Egyptians into the streets…

We’ve also said that the circumstances of [Morsi’s] removal was a coup. This was a transition of power not by the ballot box.

I wanted to jump for joy because that is exactly what I had been thinking.  It took Juan Cole’s column to bring me back down to earth and remind who just who these two political charlatans US senators John McCain and Lindsey Grahamare

McCain and Graham are urging the interim Egyptian government to engage in dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood. But in winter of 2011 just after the fall of Mubarak, this is what McCain said:

” SPIEGEL: What is your assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood?

McCain: I think they are a radical group that first of all supports Sharia law; that in itself is anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned. They have been involved with other terrorist organizations and I believe that they should be specifically excluded from any transition government. “

McCain insisted that there was in fact a military coup in Egypt on July 3, and called for political prisoners (the former Muslim Brotherhood elected government) to be released. But McCain supported the military coup of 1999 by Gen. Pervez Musharraf against the elected government of Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif.

Graham doesn’t like people to win elections if he doesn’t like them. When the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, won the Palestine Authority elections in early 2006, Graham rejected their legitimacy…

Graham and McCain are urging the Egyptian authorities to talk to the Muslim Brotherhood and find a compromise, to engage in “inclusive dialogue.” But from Obamacare to Benghazi they have been relentless in their refusal to talk to President Obama in good faith on a whole range of issues….

Calling what happened in Egypt a coup does do is make it possible for these members of a very demented and demonic party to make life difficult for the President by attempting to cut off aid to Egypt because of the “coup” and further weaken that country as well as the US president all the while strengthening the hand of America’s client state and everyone in Washington who wants to be reelected favorite country, Israel.  In order to accomplish those two goals, McCain and Graham will say and do ANYTHING, no matter how outrageous it is or how stupid it makes them look.

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The prevaricator called Karl Rove


I’m convinced this Karl Rove guy is not a very bright guy.  In a move that could only be labeled ‘the pot calling the kettle black’, Rove made this assertion about Obama

The fact of the matter is if the president continues to make this charge — this outrageous charge — that Mitt Romney is guilty of felonious activity and committed a felony, that’s a big mistake,” Rove opined. “This is gutter politics of the worst Chicago sort.

It doesn’t seem to matter to most people that Rove worked for perhaps the biggest criminal enterprise in modern time, the GWB administration or that he cut his political teeth working for the likes of the Nixon administration during its era of dirty tricks, something that Rove specialized in during his GWB tenure…Rove has always wallowed in the mire of innuendo and prevarication. If you want to know who this Rove guy is…or maybe isn’t…he is such a strange character it’s hard to tell which of the many faces he wears is really his, you can take a gander at some of his work here.

The one that gets me the most is the one with McCain.

After John McCain thumped George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, with 48 percent of the vote to Bush’s 30 percent, a massive smear campaign was launched in South Carolina, a key battleground. TV attack ads from third groups and anonymous fliers circulated, variously suggesting that McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam left him mentally scarred with an uncontrollable temper, that his wife, Cindy, abused drugs and that he had an African-American “love child.  In fact, the McCains adopted their daughter Bridget from a Bangladesh orphanage run by Mother Teresa.

We all know what happened after that….Bush went on to win the SC primary with a double digit margin and eventually steal the election in 2000. However, resorting to the racist nature of America’s subconscious, Rove was able to pull out a victory for Bush in South Carolina.  I love the Palmetto state, but like my own and all of America, it’s got a problem when it comes to race, and Rove knew it and exploited it.  Why Rove is still able to get air time, after his very tawdry record, to spew his venom is beyond me…the man has no credibility at all.  A brief look at his record should be enough to make him a social outcast, the likes of Jesse Jackson, David Duke and many others, yet he continues to get face time  on the air.  We have FoxNews to thank for that, which is just one more of many  reasons to tune them out America.  That network has given Rove a home base from which to launch his false and misleading diatribes.  My reference to Rove, the pot, calling the kettle (the Obama administration and by extension Obama) black is meant to underscore his, mine and America’s obsession with and denial about race and how it keeps pushing us backwards.  Obama, with all his faults, and he has many America, was America moving forward, Rove is America at its worst.
So the next time you hear something attributed to Karl Rove, just remember who he is and where he has come from and what he’s done.  He should be as unpalatable a pundit as any you can name.  I wish Nancy Pelosi did have him arrested…..then the photo above would have real meaning.

Spineless


, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.
Image via Wikipedia

Rick Santorum is another one of the GOP candidates for president who should be roundly and openly “refudiated” for lacking the moral courage to confront and correct a lie when given the opportunity.  You can read about his cowardly approach to a questioner’s assertion that President Obama is a “Muslim” here. The article goes on to say even John McCain corrected someone when faced with a similar situation during the 2008 campaign, but Santorum chose to play to the fear of the crowd and let the statement go unanswered.  His even lamer excuse that it’s not his responsibility to correct every misguided claim only leads one to wonder if elected how would he address lies that affect the national interest.  Would he be as pusillanimous with them as well?  Would he lead the country into war because he is unable to correct mistaken notions about adversaries, or believe that the people on the other end of the lie  should be thick skinned enough to withstand US military intervention?  America, these are the choices the GOP has presented us;  the likes of people who aspire to be our leaders and lead based on racial animosity, loathing, hatred, and fear.  Perhaps the GOP has become irrelevant to the life of this Nation….perhaps it’s time to “refudiate” the entire Party of people who want to take the country in this direction.  Then of course, there’s Ron Paul……..

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Now I know why Sharron Angle is as crazy as she is


I don’t mean to single her out, but she’s the most prominent ‘tea bagger’ Republican from west of the Mississippi who gained any national prominence….J.D. Hayworth tried as hard as he might, notwithstanding.  The tea baggers of Arizona are over the top in insanity.  They are, after Donald Rumsfeld and his cronies at the Pentagon during the Bush Administration, the worse America has to offer humanity.  Tea bagger members are steeped in racism and xenophobia, and Arizona has turned out to be the perfect breeding ground for them.  What else can account for this headline?

A local Arizona Republican Party official resigned from his post after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot out of concern for his and his family’s safety.

Anthony Miller, a GOP district chairman and former campaign aide to Sen. John McCain, told The Arizona Republic: I don’t want to take a bullet for anyone.”

Miller, the first African American to hold the post, was recently re-elected to a one-year term as chairman of the Legislative District 20 Republicans.

He told the newspaper that verbal abuse after his election and Internet postings by Tea Party supporters had him concerned for his safety.

Now before you go off calling me crazy…….here’s what else is said about Anthony

One critic referred to him derogatorily as “McCain’s boy,” Miller said. Other language was even less ambiguous. At an event in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., Miller said someone called out, “There’s Anthony, get a rope.”

This guy is a Republican, worked for a Republican and has earned his Republican bonafides but that’s still not good enough for tea bagger/partiers?  I guess bleaching cream and the straightening comb are the only things left that Miller could do to gain acceptance.  We are in such denial…… even people who worked with Miller asked the question, ‘I’ve never understood why they had this hatred for him….’ when the answer is as clear as the skin color on Anthony Miller’s body.  Wake up America.

Angle was able to escape the scathing rhetoric of the racists in her party by acting as fringe in her statements as they…but how will Allen West, the black Republican from Florida who used violence drenched metaphors and employed people to do the same, fare?  The Republican party is being pulled increasingly towards a fringe that leads towards civil war.  I admire Miller for his service to his country and his dignity, even though I think his Party is ruined, and I wish him well, but when you hear the word Republican Party, run.  Your life might depend on it.

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The Excesses of Big Government


I’ve tweeted and blogged about the racist anger and angst of Obama’s opposition which has formed around the tea bagger movement.  They’ve talked about how they are opposed to government spending and other excesses, as well they should be but it seems their anger is selective as well as counter productive and inconsistent.  Many among the progressive movement can correctly point to the fact that progressives have far more integrity about their opposition to government than the newly arrived carpet….er…make that tea baggers and two stories in this week’s news bear that out.

The first story is about the very meaning of government, and the belief that the smaller it is the more efficient it is at meeting the needs of the people; that big, burdensome bureaucracy in and of itself  only serves to enrich the pockets of those who are employed by it, offering them a comfortable lifestyle, longevity working within it while demanding very little in return for their employment is a truth embraced by progressives during the last decade but only recently by the opponents of the present administration.  Government by its very nature, becomes an instrument of regulation that limits the productivity of citizens in minutiae at their, the population’s  expense.  One would think that during times of an economic downturn the fortunes of government would also be in decline, but government never stops taxation nor does it retreat from its growth. Federal government is a very lucrative business and nowhere is that more evident than in the areas surrounding the seat of the federal government, Washington, DC where lies 6 out of the 25 wealthiest counties in all of America!  An area brimming with lobbyists who lobby government for companies looking for an edge over their competition through government favoritism and regulation, bureaucrats, employees of think tanks, who also lobby government, various and sundry cottage industry security types who’ve convinced others that  their existence is essential to the existence of this country, and media types who cover all of the machinations that go around the seat of power, the greater Washington, DC area has become a bonanza for economic growth in the country, without producing anything more than voluminous reams of paper and regulation.  This is not a recent phenomenon, but rather a steady, growing one that has taken years and many stories of fear and intimidation to produce.  During the interim we have willingly coughed up the required sums of tax dollars through cajoling or  acquiescence to officials who told us it was necessary for our survival.  These six counties have become the praetorian guard for a bloated government that has increasingly become isolated from its electorate because of  its own existence and by those who encircle government’s throne.

The second story that resembles a not too distant era is the bill proposed by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, “The Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” which lays bare government’s attempt to strip the US Constitution of habeas corpus and allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. In essence anyone who threatens the cocoon that government has built around itself, and including the six counties previously mentioned, can expect to be imprisoned without access to the judicial system of the United States, and thus, unable to prove or defend themselves against any suspicion or charge levied against them by the government.  But wait, such draconian measures have been in place since the Military Commissions Act passed in 2006 which in vague enough language to assuage the conscience of today’s tea baggers then, called for the removal of US citizens from civilian courts and placed them, if at all, at the mercy of military tribunals.  At the moment this bill has not been passed.  Let’s hope it never sees the light of day.  That John McCain has co-sponsored it means it’s in response to the opposition he faces in the Arizona senate primary from an opponent further to the right than he is, and so he wants to establish his credentials on the back of the US Constitution.  The tea baggers are not new to this political landscape and their faux pas opposition to this Administration is clearly transparently racist, but the direction it drives the Nation in is something for all to be concerned.

Where do they find these people?


I saw JD Hayworth do an interview with Chris Mathews on Hardball the other night and one of his comments really struck me as being typical of the last eight years of nonsense, lies and deception.  No, it wasn’t his remark about Obama needing to produce his birth certificate to prove to the American people whether he is a real American or not, and in the process avoiding Mathews question whether he, Hayworth, was a conspiracy theorist birther.  It was Hayworth’s dodging the question of whether he supported torture as an implement for policy by American agencies.  He went on to say that waterboarding, i.e. torture was responsible for stopping several planned terror attacks because of actionable intelligence derived therefrom.

Anyone who knows anything about torture and its use during the last decade and all of the “actionable intelligence” that might have come about because of it would and should take such claims with a grain of salt.  Such claims of the importance of torture came from people like John Kiriakou, a former CIA operative who affirmed that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists.  His accounts were picked up by main stream media and pundits and published as gospel in an attempt to legitimize an internationally recognized crime.  Of course it turns out all of Kiriakou’s stories were lies made up to extricate a criminal administration and its agencies from criminal behavior.

On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.”What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts,” he writes. “I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence.”

“I wasn’t there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time.”

“Now we know,” Kiriakou goes on, “that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied.”

Indeed. But after his one-paragraph confession, Kiriakou adds that he didn’t have any first hand knowledge of anything relating to CIA torture routines, and still doesn’t. And he claims that the disinformation he helped spread was a CIA dirty trick: “In retrospect, it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the fine arts of deception even among its own.”


Yet again, another lie about the effectiveness of our war on terror, from the people who too many of us depend on to protect us! It would behoove Hayworth not to mention this proven lie too many times as he stumps for John McCain’s senate seat for the state of Arizona, or else he might have to explain to those who are conscientious to want to know how it’s all a lie!

I was wrong-anyone care to join me?


In an earlier blog I called this election for McCain.  Tonight I’m having crow for dinner.  Congratulations to the victor President elect, Barack Obama.  He has a daunting task ahead.  We should all do what we can to help him.

eatingcrow

John McCain winner of the 2008 presidential elections


Please vote for Barack Obama.  Vote for Barack Obama, please.  I sincerely hope Obama wins the elections this coming Tuesday and I urge all who are reading this to vote for the man. He is a better candidate and person than John McCain, but despite all I’ve said, I don ‘t think he will win.  There are three main reasons why I believe this.

Our Country been betrayed by three; the government we elect to represent us and pave the way for the preservation of our freedoms and the fulfillment of our potential as a society, an obsequious press which has spouted every lie mouthed, and a candidate himself who has allowed and exploited political expediency over principle in this campaign.

September 11, 2001 was an awful day in the history of the country. It rocked the very foundation of the nation and allowed politicians and those who served with them an opportunity to expand government in ways not attempted since the Civil War.  From September 12, 2001 until today,  Americans have been fed a steady diet of hate and fear which has been difficult to remove from our collective consciousness and which politicians and members of the press have used to advance separate agendas which have had ramifications for this present election.

Our government failed us, using the fear generated by the terror attacks of 911 to turn American citizen against another, in its quest to expand government, open new lands for military conquest and limit the rights and freedoms it knew would get in the way of government tyranny.   Increased surveillance, forced renditions of people with strange names or faiths, denial of people to due process and the coercion of other institutions to achieve these goals, notably telecommunications companies, were all a part of government’s utilization of 911’s terror.  People of faith trusted their government and believed what they were told and re-elected that government a second time, while sending an “opposition” party to power in the alternative branch of government, the legislative,  to pick up where and perhaps enhance what the executive failed to do or could not do.  Unfortunately that branch of government too failed us becoming a rubber stamp for a government out of control, echoing the “lie” that would lead to such horrible acts of legislation as the Patriot and the Military Commissions Acts , passed, ratified and in some cases passed or extended a second time. We believed what was being told to us even though those that told us knew they were lying and those that reported what we were told didn’t care they were passing along the lie.  The press confused corporate responsibility with corporate profit, making yellow journalism the order of the day, using it to pit us against one another, and boosting a poorly run and essentially racist campaign to legitimacy.

But unfortunately, Barack Obama shares some blame in this debacle.  He in the minds of some, and me didn’t really do a good enough job distinguishing himself from his opponent.  Sure, there is the obvious  which makes this an historic race of enormous proportions, but Mr. Obama fell prey to political expediency, the order of the day with politicians, which basically says don’t take a stand, always fall in-between, be middle of the road, let the absence of your actions make you a winner.  In doing so he allowed a significant portion of the population to be smeared, i.e. Muslims and Arabs, he did not clearly delineate his policies from those of his opponent and in the process showed an absence of character.  It is not enough to reduce campaigns to simple sound bites and one word slogans that are different from those of your opponent; leaders lead not imitate, and above all they challenge and inspire not duck and dodge.  People intuitively are able to sense the absence of leadership despite all the faux pas trappings surrounding it, and this may account for the close poll numbers in the final days.

Simply put we are not ready nor are our leaders for what it is Mr. Obama wants.  We have been traumatized by foreign and domestic enemies who have sapped our will and spirit in ways that heretofore were unimaginable.  We, in time, will recover but time will be the medicine that heals our wounds, not phony profiteering and slogans.  For now, and for reasons mentioned above, our destiny appears to be that of continuity, doing what we have been accustomed to these last 8 years and regrettably that’s more of the same, status quo….not change.  I wish it weren’t so but that’s how I see it from where I stand.  Meanwhile, please go vote Obama and let’s hope I’m wrong.

Palin is not helping matters


More than one person has said the choice of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate was enough to convince them not to vote the Republican ticket.  That fact has been emphasized by a Washington Post article which states, ‘Perceptions of Palin grow increasingly negative’.

In polling conducted Wednesday and Thursday evenings, after the disclosure that the Republican National Committee used political funds to help Palin assemble a wardrobe for the campaign, 51 percent said they have a negative impression of her. Fewer, 46 percent, said they have a favorable view. That marks a stark turnaround from early September, when 59 percent of likely voters held positive opinions.

The declines in Palin’s ratings have been even more substantial among the very voters Republicans aimed to woo. The percentage of white women viewing her favorably dropped 21 points since early September; among independent women, it fell 24 points.

It was an insult to the electorate for McCain to choose Palin. It was a sexist choice; he wanted someone who looked photogenic next to him, physically attractive even if she had nothing intellectually to offer. However saying that you are voting for a pair of legs in a skirt is not the politically correct thing to say. Realizing they are being played the people are voicing their disapproval.

In reality Palin is her own worse foe, or enemy.  Public gaff after the next seems to follow her everywhere she goes, from the trooper gate scandal to being ill prepared for media interviews to revelations that the RNC has spent money for clothes she claims were off the rack but are really tailor made, etc. she is dogged by missteps and inaccuracies that are too easily documented.

Ashley Todd and the McCain campaign-working together to deceive you the voter!


More and more details are emerging about Ashley Todd and her role in the McCain campaign and the campaign’s role in dissemenating the false story about her being attacked. This unfortunate young woman was used by elements in THE REPUBLICAN PARTY who are heartless and deceitful to the brim and didn’t mind destroying her personal integrity or taking down America in their quest for power.  How else do you explain how this young woman was used by McCain Pennsylvania campaign communications director Peter Feldman who was out hyping details of her story before they were even known by any but the victim and the police?

Long before any facts about the Ashley Todd case had been established, McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director told reporters the alleged attacker had told the woman, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

This notion that Todd was a campaign volunteer has also been as quickly eliminated. In an effort to distance themselves from her, College Republican National Committee’s Executive Director Ethan Eilon said, “We have terminated her effective today. Obviously, we had know(sic) idea she was making this story up.” There might be some truth to that because as most campaigns do, organizations are formed that are interconnected but at the same time independent enough in order to guarantee plausible deniability, but first news reports claim Todd was working on the Pennsylvania campaign’s as a phone operator volunteer which probably put her in some sort of contact with Feldman, the communication’s director.

In that capacity and as a “volunteer” she was not working for the CRNC, which was actually paying her to work for them at some point in the campaign.  She was on loan as it were to the campaign.  I assert that Feldman sexually intimidated and harassed this young woman into making up this story for obvious political reasons.  Not being able to say how she received her injuries is significant, especially the black eye, and shows she’s still in denial, protecting someone (the person who battered her perhaps) or hiding something about this strange story. Perhaps it was Feldman’s attempt to give meaning to a relationship he fully manipulated in some perverse way for his candidate, McCain.

Unfortunately, the media should pursue this story to see just how far it reaches into the McCain campaign, but it won’t, and to be fair, doing so would not be in the best interest of this young woman’s mental health.  However, it would expose the depths at which the “system” has gone to exacerbate the adversarial aspects of political campaigning to the detriment of the “political process”. At the very least, however, Feldman should join Ashley Todd in jail for workplace harassment and John McCain should insist on no less.  Don’t expect that to happen.

Al-Qaeda pulling for John McCain


Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

That’s not the kind of news John McCain wants to hear so close to the elections, but it’s what intelligence agencies are reporting in their monitoring of the airwaves.  We’ve been told how important it is to have super secret sensitive monitoring of all forms of communications and the best money can buy is saying that Al-Qaeda wants John McCain to win the presidential elections.  That’s not news however, for the same can be said for the 2004 elections when bin laden himself used the old disinformation ploy to claim support for John Kerry’s race against Bush while secretly hoping for Bush to win.

Why would terrorists want their ardent enemies to win elections in order to continue the fight against them? Quite simply the US is paying a greater price fighting terrorism than they are in securing American interests against terrorism, and especially in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the former, it was never a threat against American interests nor those of its allies, and America knew that going into the war.  What that war has done is destabilize an oil producing country and its neighbors, caused a refugee problem that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, if not more, and presented America with the specter of war with another country, Iran.  Afghanistan, a perpetually poor country which had the misfortune of once hosting bin laden now looms large as a staging ground for incursions and another possible war in another Muslim country, Pakistan.  In both conflicts we are no closer to getting bin laden, if you think that was ever our goal, and yet we’ve alienated millions of Muslims telling them in the words of Thomas Friedman to ‘suck on this’.  It would appear to me therefore that Thomas Friedman and bin laden have much more in common than bin laden and the Muslim masses he purports to represent; neither one of them is interested in seeing the peaceful coexistence of Muslims with the West because in post cold war international relations there would be no one to justify the tremendous defense spending currently taking place in world governments, and especially ours. The current budget for defense is twice what it was in 2000 when Bush took office and with fighting taking place on two fronts, the US military will need to be rebuilt at a tremendous expense, no matter who wins the November elections.

The idea that bin laden is an instrument for US foreign policy has traction when one considers the large amounts of money spent to “fight” him and the members of his group, but what is happening on an even larger scale is the fight the US is waging with Muslim societies world wide.  Under the leadership of the neoconservative cabal wing of the Republican Party, Islamofascism has taken expression and become the enemy of our Nation.  It is defined as any body of Muslims who are not ok with the notion that the US can go anywhere, break any law and do anything to fight its perceived enemies and in the process make more and new enemies.  It is a policy of perpetual confrontation which only benefits a large military complex that needs conflict on which to survive, which gets us back again to Osama bin laden who can only survive as a “hero” for Muslims if there is conflict between them and who “he” defines as their enemy, the US. What’s interesting to me is we have more than enough people who are willing to whet the appetite of both parties, the neocons of Washington, and al-Qaeda of some cave in the Hindu-Kush mountain range somewhere.  Perhaps it’s time to break this cycle.

The Racist Campaign of the Republican Party and its surrogates


There are plenty of people willing to “front” for THE REPUBLICAN PARTY in its fight against the Obama campaign, and none more diligently than the pages of the Drudge Report.  They are still running, as I type this, a story about a McCain volunteer who was robbed and then assaulted after it was discovered she was a John McCain supporter. The woman’s story is apparently so fishy that even those on the right of Drudge don’t support it.

Police planned to administer a polygraph test to Ashley Todd, 20, because her statements about the attack conflict with evidence from the Citizens Bank ATM where she claims the incident occurred, police said.

When it’s debunked, that story of it being a hoax won’t grace the pages of PARTY surrogates like Drudge who will go on to other sleaze.  The image below also appeared on a DrudgeReport page with the caption below: Obama +7.3 There is much more THE REPUBLICAN PARTY has up its sleeve. The late surge of Republican supporters for Jesse Helms who aired a racially charged commercial in his race against African-American Harvey Gantt was produced by some of the same people who have played a part in Party politics up to this point! The art of subliminal advertising in an election as historic as this will be used to the maximum degree to give the advantage to McCain.

But let’s not forget that today’s REPUBLICAN PARTY doesn’t always feel the need to be so subtle in their message.  Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama has already been attributed to race by many on the Right.  Limbaugh suggests Powell is an “uncle Tom” and should give back his four stars to Ronald Reagan and/or George H.W. Bush because they weren’t black.  But the excuse that Powell’s endorsement is about race ignores the fact that a lot of other people are endorsing Obama that have nothing at all to do with race but with the direction they perceive their candidate is going to take the country.  Kenneth Adelman, Chris Buckley, Scott McClellan, former Republican governor of Massachusetts William Weld all come to mind.  Would Limbaugh et.co say that black supporters of McCain back him because he’s white?  The idiocy of THE PARTY’S surrogates and THE PARTY itself is apparent.  One should expect much more of the same thing in the days remaining.

UPDATE ON THE ASHLEY TODD STORY

It appears her story is already falling apart and all that remains is why she came up with such a really big lie.  It’s not unusual for people to use racism to cover their personal faults.  The man who shot his wife in Boston and blamed it on a non-existent black thug or the teenager who claimed she was kidnapped and raped by white men in upstate New York, or the woman who drowned her children in South Carolina and claimed they were hijacked by a black bandit said these things when elections weren’t at stake. So the fault for why this was tied to an election lies at the feet of a corporate media that likes to sensationalize, and to the political hacks who want to advance their candidate at the expense of the welfare of the society.  Ms. Todd has “issues” and I hope she gets them resolved, but we as a Nation have the same issues that need fixing and unless we get help for them, we’re as likely to continue down the same road of destructive behavior as this young woman.

Trying to keep score


This last week has been really fun to watch with so much going on.  I’m sure other bloggers have written about the shenanigans but here are my two cents concerning the political fiasco call the presidential campaign. The McCain campaign tried to capitalize on “Joe the Plumber” until it was learned he was closely related to the Keating scandal which McCain played a major role.

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.

Opps! You have to ask yourself what was the Obama campain thinking when they let their candidate get sandbagged by an obvious political hack.  Why was Obama walking through this guy’s neighborhood?  Dumb and dumber, I suppose.

William Buckley’s son Chris has come out endorsing Obama and has had to quit his post as a contributing writer on the National Review as a result.  Conservatives, or rather the truest party loyalists among them, those I consider brain dead and members of THE REPUBLICAN PARTY can’t stand the idea that a born and raised conservative doesn’t see anything conservative about their present party.  They forget, those on the National Review, how their publication’s founder distanced himself from Bush and his foray into Iraq, pretty much declaring himself a heretic from his own magazine and the modern day conservative right neocon cabal.

“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

The conservative right has also distanced itself from Palin’s choice as the vice presidential nominee.

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for?

*snip*

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

You betcha’!