skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The Top Ten Craziest Things John McCain Has Said10. Responding to a student who criticized his remark about our staying in Iraq for 100 years, McCain quipped, "No American argues against our military presence in Korea or Japan or Germany or Kuwait or other places, or Turkey, because America is not receiving casualties."
I guess Ron Paul isn't American. Or Dennis Kucinich. Or many others who have questioned the mindset behind keeping our troops abroad forever, which is what an empire does, not a republic. Although, perhaps more people don't argue "against our military presence" in the other spots he named, because, you know, those wars weren't based on 100 percent fabricated evidence and didn't make us less safe after they were done. Just a thought.
9. John McCain is "very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support."
Just FYI, John Hagee makes Jeremiah Wright seem like Richard Simmons. Hagee has called the Catholic Church the "Great Whore," an "apostate church," the "Antichrist," and a "false cult system." And let's not even get into what he has said about Jews.
8. "In the shorter term," said McCain, "if you somehow told American businesses and families, 'Look, you're not going to experience a tax increase in 2010,' I think that's a pretty good short-term measure."
This is McCain's statement in suport of making permanent the tax cuts he voted and railed against in 2001 and 2003. Back then they were only a giveaway to the rich and "budget-busters." Now that we are much further along in borrowing our economy from the Chinese, and the rich have become even richer, they are a way to stimulate the economy by putting money in the hands of working Americans.
7. "This is a Catholic Voter Alert. Governor George Bush has campaigned against Senator John McCain by seeking the support of Southern fundamentalists who have expressed anti-Catholic views. Several weeks ago, Governor Bush spoke at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Bob Jones has made strong anti-Catholic statements, including calling the Pope the anti-Christ, the Catholic Church a satanic cult! John McCain, a pro-life senator, has strongly criticized this anti-Catholic bigotry, while Governor Bush has stayed silent while seeking the support of Bob Jones University. Because of this, one Catholic pro-life congressman has switched his support from Bush to McCain, and many Michigan Catholics support John McCain for president."
This was a John McCain for president campaign robo-call in 2000. Today, as we pointed out, he hangs with the Rev. Hagee who thinks Catholicism is a "cult" and the "Antichrist." How romantic.
Five Things You Need to Know to Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq
The "crackdown" comes on the heels of the approval of a new "provincial law," which will ultimately determine whether Iraq remains a unified state with a strong central government or is divided into sectarian-based regional governates. The measure calls for provincial elections in October, and the winners of those elections will determine the future of the Iraqi state. Control of the country's oil wealth, and how its treasure will be developed, will also be significantly influenced by the outcome of the elections.
It's a relatively straightforward story: Iraq is ablaze today as a result of an attempt to impose Colombian-style democracy on the unstable country: Maliki's goal, shared by the like-minded allies among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities that dominate his administration, and with at least tacit U.S. approval, is to kill off the opposition and then hold a vote.
To better understand the nature of this latest round of conflict, here are five things one needs to know about what's taking place across Iraq.
1. A visible manifestation of Iraq's central-but-under-teported political conflict (not "sectarian violence")
Iraq, which had experienced little or no sectarian-based violence prior to the U.S. invasion, has been plagued with sectarian militias fighting for the streets of Iraq's formerly heterogeneous neighborhoods, and "sectarian violence" has become Americans' primary explanation for the instability that has plagued the country.
But the sectarian-based street-fighting is a symptom of a larger political conflict, one that has been poorly analyzed in the mainstream press. The real source of conflict in Iraq -- and the reason political reconciliation has been so difficult -- is a fundamental disagreement over what the future of Iraq will look like. Loosely defined, it is a clash of Iraqi nationalists -- with Muqtada al-Sadr as their most influential voice -- who desire a unified Iraqi state and public-sector management of the country's vast oil reserves and who forcefully reject foreign influence on Iraq's political process, be it from the United States, Iran or other outside forces.
The nationalists now represent a majority in Iraq's parliament but are opposed by what might be called Iraqi separatists, who envision a "soft partition" of Iraq into at least four semiautonomous and sectarian-based regional entities, welcome the privatization of the Iraqi energy sector (and the rest of the Iraqi economy) and rely on foreign support to maintain their power.
We've written about this long-standing conflict extensively in the past, and now we're seeing it come to a head, as we believed it would at some point.
My thoughts on the Five Years of the Iraq WarI know I am just another voice in a long list of voices to speak about the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, that started with "Shock and Awe" to us that watched it on TV is was a billion dollar fireworks display, to the Iraqis who lived thru it, it was a night of hell, that was just the beginning of their long nightmare. One that has still not ended.
We are being told that the "Surge" has worked that violence is down, yes but to what levels? The same levels that were "normal" in 2005, not the accelerated deaths of 2006, so is that success or just the reality of war, our press seems to have bought into the fact the "surge" has worked, we no longer see the war daily on our TV sometimes it can go fow a week or more without mention, especially now that we have financial problems, home foreclosures, large corporations in trouble, high gas. All we need is another missing blonde woman and the war can be completely forgotten.
Am I cynical about the coverage of the war? Bet your sweet bippy I am. The MSM never questioned the real reasons behind the war, they followed President Bush like the good little baby ducklings, they ran to get imbedded with Rumsfeld's approval so they could be on the front lines.
They didn't ask the hard questions, they admit now they made a mistake. Everyone admits a mistake was made in invading Iraq except Georhe W Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, they still feel it was the right decision.
They encouraged the nation and the world to support them because of the likely prospect of Saddam getting a nuclear weapon, that he had large quantities of chemical weapons and biological weapons, and we had to stop him, before he turned them over to terrorists.
They ran the UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq before they finished their search, despite the fact NO weapons had been found, and no facilities for creating them. They then spent months searching for the weapons they "knew" were there.
Then when it was obvious there were no "smoking guns" it became all people deserved freedom, and then it was Saddam used "chemical weapons on the Kurds" to justify the war.
On Iraq The People Have SpokenThis November we will have a chance to completely turn this country around by picking a new president. In addition, we will be afforded the choice to replace incumbent members of Congress based on their past performances. My advice to voters is to look at your member of Congress’ voting record in comparison to the member’s campaign slogans. My advice to the candidates running is to make ending the war in Iraq the # 1 priority of their campaign.
The unconscionable war/occupation of Iraq is the root of all evil in this country. I am referring to the current recession, rising gas prices, the national debt, the significant decline in social welfare programs, lack of health care for millions of Americans, our broken military, the decimation of our national security, and our image in the world community — that is in the toilet, courtesy of George W. Bush.
Blackwater Seeps Into the CampaignHillary Clinton has just become the most significant US political figure to come out in favor of banning Blackwater and other armed private security contractors from operating in Iraq. “When I am President I will ask the Joint Chiefs for their help in reducing reliance on armed private military contractors with the goal of ultimately implementing a ban on such contractors,” she declared in a major policy speech on Monday.
Her position is a welcome development for those in the Congress, such as Illinois Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who have long sought to rein in private security contractors.
In her speech, Clinton slammed Obama on this issue, saying, “Senator Obama and I have a substantive disagreement here. He won’t rule out continuing to use armed private military contractors in Iraq to do jobs that historically have been done by the US military or government personnel.” The Clinton campaign wants voters to believe it is that simple. It is not.
First, Clinton’s timing is suspect. She has served for five years on the Senate Armed Services Committee and has done nothing to end the use of Blackwater and other private security forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In the aftermath of the September 2007 Nisour Square massacre, during which Blackwater operatives gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians, Clinton condemned the company’s conduct but declined to sign on as a co-sponsor to legislation introduced by Sanders and Schakowsky in November 2007 seeking to ban Blackwater and other mercenary companies.
Instead, she chose to do it in late February, after The Nation published the comments of a senior foreign policy advisor to Obama who said, “I can’t rule out, I won’t rule out, private security contractors” in Iraq if Obama becomes president and that Obama does not intend to sign onto the Sanders-Schakowsky legislation. The next day, after refusing for over a week to provide a comment to The Nation on the issue, Clinton’s staff released a statement saying she would endorse the Stop Outsourcing Security Act to “ban the use of Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq.” Clinton declared, “The time to show these contractors the door is long past due.” The statement was released five days before the make-or-break primaries in Texas and Ohio, when the New York Senator was on the ropes.
On Monday, Clinton said, “I believe what matters in this campaign is not just the promises we’ve made to end the war; what matters is what we’ve actually done when it came time to match words with action. Because more than anything else, what we’ve done is an indication of what we’ll do.” On the issue of Blackwater, Clinton has been MIA for years.
Clinton’s campaign is well aware that Obama has been ahead of the curve on the issue of armed private contractors in Iraq–and certainly ahead of her. In October 2007, Clinton claimed she was unaware that Bush had granted Blackwater and other contractors immunity in 2004. “Maybe I should have known about it; I did not know about it,” she said.
On Monday, Obama struck back. “Now, let me be clear: I actually introduced legislation in the Senate before Senator Clinton even mentioned this that said we had to crack down on private contractors like Blackwater because I don’t believe that they should be able to run amok and put our own troops in danger, get paid three or four times or ten times what our soldiers are getting paid. I am the one who has been opposed to those operators. Senator Clinton is a late comer to that. But you know this is what happens during political season and I understand it.”
In February 2007, Obama introduced contractor reform and oversight legislation that has become the Democrats’ major plan in the Congress. Obama’s bill seeks to make all contractors subject to prosecution in US civilian courts for crimes committed on a foreign battlefield. The bill is not without its problems. In theory, FBI investigators would deploy to the crime scene, gather evidence and interview witnesses, leading to indictments and prosecutions.
Accountability for the Iraq WarWe have been engaged in an illegal war in Iraq for five years - and there is no accountability.
It is beyond doubt that our leaders lied us into this war - and there is no accountability.
More than four thousand American and coalition soldiers are dead - and there is no accountability.
Tens of thousands of American and coalition soldiers are seriously wounded - and there is no accountability.
Our surviving soldiers are coming home traumatized from the war without proper medical and psychiatric care - and there is no accountability.
More than a million Iraqis, mostly civilians, have been killed in this war and countless others wounded - and there is no accountability.
More than four million Iraqis are displaced as internal or external refugees of this war - and there is no accountability.
By using so-called “depleted uranium” weapons, we are poisoning the earth, air and water of Iraq, causing serious health problems to Iraqis and coalition soldiers - and there is no accountability.
America has become a nation that tortures - and there is no accountability.
America has become a nation that spies on its citizens - and there is no accountability.
America has become a nation that hides the body bags of its soldiers killed in action - and there is no accountability.
We are spending $12 billion a month on this war - and there is no accountability.
Reputable economists calculate that this war will cost American citizens more than $3 trillion - and there is no accountability.
This war is burdening unborn generations of Americans and Iraqis - and there is no accountability.
This war has brought respect for America to its lowest ebb throughout the world - and there is no accountability.
The war in Iraq has stretched our military forces to the breaking point, making us far less able to cope with real threats to our security - and there is no accountability.
The war in Iraq has been a training ground for terrorists, making us far less safe - and there is no accountability.
Warrantless Surveillance Compromise Proposed No Case for Blanket ImmunityThe majority leadership in the House of Representatives has embraced a compromise measure [PDF] that would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in a move intended to resolve a deadlock between the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, the Washington Post reported.
The proposed legislation would allow telephone companies to defend their role in the White House's warrantless surveillance program in secret ex parte hearings before a federal judge, which would include special rules to allow the introduction of secret evidence, but would not grant blanket retroactive immunity to the companies, according to the New York Times.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the legislation would (1) create a new commission to examine the warrantless surveillance program, (2) loosen judicial oversight while still requiring that a FISC judge approve new surveillance programs, and (3) allow telephone companies to defend themselves in the secret proceedings (described above) while limiting monetary damage awards if the company's actions are held illegal.
The House Judiciary Committee released a statement today saying that, after reviewing the classified information regarding warrantless surveillance, "the administration has not established a valid and credible case to justify granting blanket retroactive immunity at this time."
Former Christian Right Leaders 'Fess up
Frank Schaeffer spent several years making a good living writing books promoting the Religious Right's worldview and speaking before rapturous crowds of fundamentalist Christians.
Schaeffer, the son of evangelical guru Francis Schaeffer, was the closest thing to a rock star that politically conservative fundamentalism can offer. As the Religious Right soared in the 1980s, Schaeffer was there to ride the wave. Young, bright and charismatic, he could have founded his own Religious Right group or perhaps even launched a political career.
Twenty years have passed. What does Schaeffer think of the Religious Right today? He wouldn't touch it with the proverbial 10-foot pole -- and the feeling is mutual. A spiritual and professional crisis brought Schaeffer to the understanding that the Religious Right has it all wrong.
"My doubts really began when I realized that the people we were working with on the Religious Right were profoundly anti-American," Schaeffer said in a recent interview. "I began to get the same vibe from them I got from my friends on the far left during the Vietnam War. They seemed to be rooting for North Vietnam. When I was working with the Religious Right, they seemed be rooting for the failure of America. Bad news was good news for them."
Schaeffer isn't the only ex-Religious Right activist having second thoughts these days. About 30 years ago, a young lawyer named John W. Whitehead worked alongside people like Jerry Falwell to help birth the Religious Right. Hoping to give the movement an intellectual grounding, Whitehead penned a series of books attacking the separation of church and state and demanding a government based on Christian fundamentalism.
Whitehead's books -- The Separation Illusion, The Second American Revolution and The Stealing of America -- made him a popular figure in Religious Right circles. With the backing of Falwell and others, he helped found the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive and highly influential coalition of Religious Right groups. He also formed the Rutherford Institute, a legal group designed to promote conservative Christian causes.
Venturing into the farthest fringes of the Religious Right, Whitehead was for several years close to Rousas John Rushdoony, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement that seeks to replace America's secular republic with a theocracy based on the Old Testament's legal codes.
Whitehead repudiated theocracy years ago. It's unlikely he'd be welcome at a CNP meeting now.
The Banality of the Surveillance StateIndependent of revelations yesterday that the FBI has been abusing its NSL powers for years, it was also reported that the Federal Government is now launching “a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information.” The system will store broad new categories of data about the behavior of Americans — from the mildly suspicious to the perfectly innocuous — and will create “new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.”
When asked yesterday during her weekly chat about the dangers of this new system, The Washington Post’s intelligence reporter Dana Priest, one of the country’s few truly great investigative journalists, said this:
Savannah, Ga.: Dana, what’s the flap about this new info sharing system? From what I read in the article, it only shares existing data. . . . Anyway, this seems to be merely a case of reality catching up to Hollywood . . . after all, we’ve been watching “CSI” and “NCIS” for years where they make a few keystrokes and a suspect’s entire life comes pouring out. This was supposed to be one of the things put in after Sept. 11, correct?
Dana Priest: Ah ha — but was is “legal” information? Sure, if you get arrested that’s one thing; or even picked up as a suspect in a crime. Let’s use the example in the story: You have a flat tire near a nuclear power plant. The cop puts that into the data bases and discovers you’ve had three flat tires outside nuclear power plants in the last year. Now that’s interesting and worth looking into, right?
But does that mean something as simple and innocent as a flat tire gets added into the data base. Would that be legal? Switch out “flat tire” for “defaulting on a loan” or “attending a political rally” or “gun purchases” — all legal things. Does it bother you that the police could link up your political rally attendance if they had some other reason to query your information? You see where it’s going . . . . lots of questions. Would have to have safeguards to make it acceptable, I’m certain.
The amount of data which the Federal Government now collects and stores regarding the behavior of innocent American citizens is truly staggering. It is just literally true that the Government now maintains sweeping digital dossiers on its citizens, including ones who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any wrongdoing of any kind. And without much debate or attention of any kind, the amount of monitoring and the scope of the data just keeps growing. Since when was sweeping domestic surveillance and keeping records about innocent Americans ever supposed to be a function of the Federal Government?
The grave dangers from this growing Surveillance State don’t require nefarious, cartoon-like government plots. The most genuine dangers are far more banal than sinister. Just as Priest suggests, it doesn’t take cackling, Lex-Luthor-like government villains to cause serious abuse. Particularly given the almost complete lack of oversight in how the executive branch functions, it’s very easy to imagine the definition of what’s “relevant” and “appropriate” slowly (though inexorably) being moved increasingly outward even by well-intentioned though overzealous law enforcement officials, to say nothing of the ones who aren’t well-intentioned. In fact, it’s almost impossible to imagine that not happening.
It’s extremely easy to find people who believe that attendance at a political rally, or membership in certain political groups, or even more pedestrian conduct referenced by Priest, constitutes reasonable grounds for “suspicion.” That mentality is obviously prevalent among some substantial segment of federal government employees and intelligence and other law enforcement agents. The decades of intelligence abuses leave no doubt about that.
FISA Fight The nation's editorial boards weigh inThe Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
According the American Civil Liberties Union, the president could have extended the act until Congress could figure out how to hammer out a palatable version of the FISA bill. But, says Timothy Sparapani, senior legislative counsel, on the ACLU's Web site, "The president continues to misrepresent the situation with FISA. Fear mongering and making unsubstantiated claims of lost intelligence does not help Congress reach a resolution."
No, but it might force Congress' hand, nonetheless, into passing a version of the bill that has everything Bush wants.
He's already threatened to veto anything less. But what of those who feel the government is violating their privacy?
"Suck it up," said the president of the United States, the same guy who led the charge into Iraq to, you guessed it, protect our freedoms.
We'd like to take this opportunity to remind the House that we'd like to see less sucking up and more standing up, please.
The Houston Chronicle:
What this dispute is really about is shielding telecoms from any responsibility for enabling surveillance of customers that might have violated their constitutional rights to privacy.
It's understandable that Bush would want to prevent court scrutiny of a potentially illegal spying program that operated outside the law for so long. But the administration is putting the protection of corporations and partisan posturing above the constitutional rights of the American people.
The Rebirth of American Civic LifeIn the mushrooming procedural debate about Democratic superdelegates and the uncontested Florida and Michigan primaries, more is at stake than the identity of the presidential nominee or even the Democrats’ chances of victory in November. Primaries and caucuses coast to coast in the last two months have evinced the sharpest increase in civic engagement among American youth in at least a half-century, portending a remarkable revitalization of American democracy. But that rebirth of American civic life would be aborted if the decision rendered by millions of ordinary Americans could be overturned by a backroom deal among political insiders. The issue is not public jurisprudence or obscure party regulations or the alleged “wisdom” of party elders, but simple playground notions of fairness.
Throughout the last four decades of the 20th century, young people’s engagement in American civic life declined year after year with depressing regularity. In fall 1966, well before the full flowering of Vietnam War protests, a UCLA poll of college freshmen nationwide found that “keeping up with politics” was a “very important” goal in their lives for fully 60 percent.
Thirty-four years later that figure had plummeted to 28 percent. In 1972, when the vote was first extended to 18-year-olds, turnout in the presidential election among 18- to 24-year-olds was a disappointing 52 percent. But even beginning at that modest level, rates of voting in presidential elections by young people steadily fell throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, reaching barely 36 percent in 2000. National commissions bemoaned the seemingly inexorable increase in youthful apathy and incivism. The National Commission on Civic Renewal said, “When we assess our country’s civic and moral condition, we are deeply troubled. . . . We are in danger of becoming a nation of spectators.”
Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a national tragedy, but also a vivid reminder that we are all in this together. Civic seismometers across the land showed a sharp spike in virtually every measure of community-mindedness. It was, I wrote at the time, not only a tragedy, but also the sort of opportunity for civic revival that comes along once or twice a century. Just as Pearl Harbor had spawned the civic-minded “Greatest Generation,” so too Sept. 11 might turn out to produce a more civically engaged generation of young people.
For most Americans the half-life of the civic boomlet after the attacks was barely six months. Within a year measures of civic engagement had returned to the previous levels, from which they have barely budged since. Except among young people.
Among the cohort of Americans caught by 9/11 in their formative years, the effects of the attacks on their civic consciousness were more enduring. The annual UCLA chart of interest in politics jumped upward in 2001 for the first time in decades and has kept rising every year since.
Last month the UCLA researchers reported that “For today’s freshmen, discussing politics is more prevalent now than at any point in the past 41 years.” This and other evidence led us and other observers to speak hopefully of a 9/11 generation, perhaps even a “new Greatest Generation.” In the 2004 and 2006 elections, turnout among young people began at last to climb after decades of decline, reaching the highest point in 20 years in 2006. As we approached the presidential season of 2008, young Americans were, in effect, coiled for civic action, not because of their stage of life, but because of the lingering effects of the unifying national crisis they had experienced in their formative years.
The exceptionally lively presidential nominating contests of this year - and, it must be said, the extraordinary candidacy of Barack Obama - have sparked into white hot flame a pile of youthful kindling that had been stacked and ready to flare for more than six years. The 18-year-olds first eligible to vote in 2008 were in sixth grade when the twin towers fell, and their older sisters and brothers who were college seniors in September 2001 are now 28 or 29. It is precisely this group, above all others in America, that has pushed participation rates in this spring’s caucuses and primaries to record levels. Turnout in this spring’s electoral contests so far has generally been higher than in previous presidential nominating contests, but for twentysomethings the rise has been truly phenomenal - turnout often three or four times greater than ever before measured.
The 2008 elections are thus the coming-out party of this new Greatest Generation. Their grandparents of the original Greatest Generation were the civic pillars of American democracy for more than a half-century, and at long last, just as that generation is leaving the scene, reinforcements are arriving. Americans of every political persuasion should rejoice at this epochal swing of the generational pendulum, for it portends precisely the sort of civic renaissance for which Jeremiahs have been calling for many years.
