Liars

This is the horse-made-of-bullshit Cowboy John McCain rode out of the stable the other day...



A couple of real mavericks those two...

It is filled with misleading crap, but it includes one clear, undeniable, flat-out lie. It says Palin "stopped the bridge to nowhere." Not even close to true. The U.S. Congress stopped the bridge (in effect) when they removed the earmark that dedicated the money to the bridge. And this occured before Palin was even elected governor! And during that campaign she actually supported the bridge project. Even after the bridge became a national symbol of waste and a late night tv punchline, Palin still supported it, telling residents of the area that "you aren't 'nowhere' to me."

Once she was governor, the project was a political non-starter, but she still took every dime of the federal money for the bridge and allocated it for other projects—including the roads that lead to the non-existent bridge.

Here is Obama's response ad in which attacks back with the same theme...



It's about fucking time. The ad actually uses the word "lying"—which is accurate and patently obvious—yet further than I thought they would go.

Now Obama just needs to get out in front on this shit and play some offense, not just defense.

Pressure Cookers and a Race Boiled Down

From a reader at Andrew Sullivan's...

[...] One benefit of this long campaign is that it really does show a person's character. And I realized. We have two men running for president right now. One has stayed true to himself throughout despite all the pressure. The other really hasn't or maybe we've just seen what he really was all along.

Obama said at the outset that he wanted a civil campaign on the issues. He said he would avoid the politics of person destruction. He demanded a cool, no drama organization -- much like himself.

He organized a strong team. Set clear goals. Adopted a sound plan and stuck to it. Reasoned, careful. Solid judgment. And in the intense glare of things like Wright and flags pins, he stuck to it all. Above all, Obama really has stayed true to who he is.

McCain on the other hand, despite his calls for a civil campaign, injected personal attacks. He cosied up to the same religious extremist he once decried. People like Hagee. And when that wasn't enough, he brought onto the ticket a evangelical with extreme views on abortion, contraception and sex education -- positions well to the right of most of the people in the Republican Party. And he hired the same polarizing, no-holds-barred political assassins that George Bush unleashed on America and McCain himself.

Senator McCain didn't stay true to himself. He morphed into a right-wing, polarizing ideologue campaign. And why? On the one hand, he's ambivalent about his ambitions, but often he'll lose sight of his values and overreach for the sake of those ambitions. In other words, he falls victim to the allure of power and loses his good judgment. He doesn't stay true to himself.

I dearly hope American's will come to appreciate this about these two men. One has stayed true to the better angels of his nature. One succumbed to the darker angels of his. Which one would make a better president in these sad and trying times?

These facts are so plainly obvious, yet never pointed out in the mainstream.

Last night, McCain pivoted from the blistering attacks of the previous evening and played the role (for the most part) of the kindly old veteran telling tales on a porch swing. He is hoping to prop up the illusion of his Maverick™ and serious statesman image. I hope people wake up and stop falling for it...Too bad I have such little faith in the media and even less in the electorate.

GOP Training Almost Complete

Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick pleads guilty, resigns
Will pay $1M fine, spend 4 months in jail
Sep 04, 2008 15:17 EST

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges Thursday in a sex scandal, forcing him out of office after months of defiantly holding onto his job leading the nation's 11th-largest city. "I lied under oath," Kilpatrick said in court.

[...] As part of Thursday's deal, the 38-year-old Democrat is to serve four months in jail and five years of probation. He also would pay the $1 million in restitution over the five-year probationary period, cannot run for any elected office for five years and loses his law license.

But wait! He could be Vice President! Waaay more people live in Detroit than all of Alaska, and Canada is right across the river!

It's too bad. Kwame was a young guy with talent and real potential. He was elected right after we moved to Michigan, and I recall thinking how cool it was that this 31 year old who celebrated his victory by "raising the roof" was elected mayor of an ascendant Detroit. He did some good things and had big plans but ended up squandering a great opportunity and abusing his position. He turned out to be a giant jackass, and deserves every bit of that punishment.

Impressions of Palin

She's very good.

Seriously. Some of that is the context—she shared a stage with some AWFUL speakers—but she blew away the field. She is far and away the best public speaker and presenter on the GOP team, and will clearly be the highlight of this otherwise moribund convention. I fear she will be a terrific motivator for a swath of the party that has pretty much sat on the sidelines until now.

There was a laundry list of bullshit in that speech, but nobody watching that will know it, and no one in the media will call her on it.

Palin brought out pure red meat for the base. Perfectly prepared, and served with a smile. She hit every GOP applause line, and checked off the usual list of imaginary foes, and totally fraudulent talking points.

Her record is thin, her experience lacking, and the substance of her message is crap, but it won't matter, I think she just earned herself a giant fucking pass from the doubters in her party and from a media just waiting to get put back in its place.

John McCain might have made a risky campaign decision, or a bad post-election governing decision, but he clearly made a great casting decision, and I think she just aced her audition.

It remains to be seen how this message is received in the wider, non-convention arena, but she did her job tonight.

She's a gamechanger.

"Live Mic" Murphy and Peggy "Noonan!"

This is awesome. During RNC coverage today, Republican strategist Mike Murphy and conservative WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan are busted during a break revealing their true opinions of the Palin pick...



Keep those comments in mind when these two bullshit artists give the polar opposite as their "analysis" later tonite.

(In case you can't see the video, or had trouble hearing it, here's the transcript.)

Chuck Todd: [...] Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she's the right woman for the job Up next, one man who's already convinced and he'll us why, Gov. Jon Huntsman.

(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

UPDATE: Noonan explains herself. Some convincing, some not as much.

In Case You Forgot...

...John McCain was a P.O.W.

Look closely and you might spot Fred Thompson giving his speech at the Republican Convention Tuesday night in front of a fucking IMAX of the Hanoi Hilton.

Word of the Day

Palintology: n. The act of digging into a person's background after you select them for a position of great political importance.

[h/t Toast]

Fair Game

I was offline most of the weekend, so I didn't get to see anything as it unfolded, but I've tried to catch up on all the news regarding the race, and I have this to say this regarding Gov. Palin's daughter Bristol's pregnancy...

Generally I'd be hard and fast on the fact that family, especially children, are off-limits. But, like a tv judge, "I will allow" some careful questions on the topic for this reason: the campaign—and McCain and Palin specifically—seem more than comfortable using pregnancy in the Palin family for political points when it suits THEM.

Gov. Palin is supposed to get a gold star for carrying her Downs Syndrome baby to term, even though her own beliefs on the subject make that a no-brainer decision, and the platform position of her party would mandate her having it.

And now, 17-year-old, unwed, 5-months pregnant Bristol Palin is also going to have HER baby, and what's more, according to the McCain camp, "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby." Well, isn't THAT special? When it comes to every other woman in the country, even victims of rape and incest, it'd be fine with both McCain AND Sarah Palin to make THAT decision FOR them.

Sorry. That doesn't earn a complete and total pass from me.

--

As for the "Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her daughter" crap I saw, I'm treating that as the flip side of the "Obama is a secret Muslim" coin.

Weekend Report

JACKBOOTED THUGS
Apparently the federal government is taking full advantage of the cover provided by Gustav to trample the Constitution and absolutely ABUSE their power regarding the RNC Convention. Glenn Greenwald is on the job.

WHAT HAPPENED TO "COUNTRY FIRST"?
Ezra on McCain's choice:

This was, for McCain, a major decision. And we can learn from it. And here's what even his supporters must admit: Country did not come first. Polls did. The calculations are fully transparent. Understanding that he needed to broaden his electoral coalition, he picked a woman. Understanding he needed youth, he picked a young politician. Understanding he needed to emphasize his reformist credentials, he picked a onetime whistleblower. What he didn't pick was anyone able to help him govern, or capable of stepping forward in a moment of crisis. Palin is not an experienced foreign policy hand like Lieberman or a successful and experienced governor like Tommy Thompson. Today, McCain chose his campaign over his presidency. Over our presidency.

PALIN HAS MILITARY COMMAND EXPERIENCE. NO, SERIOUSLY...
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds just talking completely out of his ass when questioned about Palin's lack of foreign policy experience... "Palin has more military command experience than Obama AND Biden because she commands the Alaska National Guard." Like all governors. Stateside. During natural disasters. Of which Alaska's had zero.

OBAMA'S IMPERFECT SPEECH
There was one BIG part of Obama's speech that I thought was weak. Bitch, Phd caught it as well...

I loved Obama's speech at Invesco, but there's one part where he was wrong:

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

No, actually John McCain doesn't care. He doesn't care that millions of Americans don't have health insurance, or if he does, he cares more about party ideology that the government shouldn't be in the business of making sure people have health care. He cares more about the hollow platform of "individual responsibility" than he does about individuals, more about the political benefits of being pro-life than the moral implications of denying women agency over their own bodies. John McCain and Sarah Palin get it. They know. They just don't give a shit.

Perfectly put. It was the first thing I thought when I heard him utter the words. I'm sure I'm not the only one... Bitch, Phd makes a great point about Palin as well...

Does her support for overturning Roe, and her belief that creationism should be taught in schools, and her denial of global warming mean she's dumb? No. She just cares more about the triumph of her political worldview than she does about the Constitution. Just like a lot of Republicans.

[...] Dismissing Palin as insignificant isn't going to help us. She didn't get where she is, so fast and to such acclaim, by being a dummy. We should recognize her for what she is: smart, charismatic, and full of support for policy positions that hurt ordinary Americans.

Huge

So, last night after the speech, Mrs F was ribbing me about the fact that I was going to stay up late reading everyone's take on a speech I had just watched. She also tried to get me to face the "fact" that nobody was watching except but voters who had made up their mind—in-the-tank Dems or ’wingers looking to get their hate on—and that it wouldn't make a difference.

Hopefully, this indicates she was quite wrong.

NEW YORK - Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was seen by more than 38 million people. Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year.

And that doesn't include PBS or CSPAN.

That's pretty fucking huge. Since I spend so much time immersed in politics, it's hard for me to pull back and relate to what the layman might think (or not think). From everything I read, the convention speech is when people start paying attention, and, if they are undecided, that speech and the debates are usually what can impact them.

She had me second-guessing that somewhat, but I still believed that speech could be a game-changer. And now, those ratings indicate it was seen by a LOT of people, not all of whom can be "decided."

When only 100 million people bother to vote, getting over 38 million of them to watch the speech where you define yourself and your vision is pretty damn good.

[h/t Cesca]

Get a Good Look

This is the last known picture of this boot—
It is now firmly lodged up John McCain's ass.

Big Dog Allowed

We've seen the worst of Bill Clinton these past few months, Tonight, we saw the best. And it's mighty good.
Andrew Sullivan, noted Clinton-hater.

Yeah. It was that good. And Kerry gave the speech of his life tonight as well. Biden was strong, and then Obama brought it home with his cameo. All I could think is, "Who the fuck is voting against this?" And, "What can the GOP pull that can outdo this?"

Which inevitably leads to, "What the fuck is the matter with this country that this is even a race?"

What Does This Picture Have to Do With Joe Biden's Iraq War vote...

Yes, Joe Biden voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq. But was he the same breed of sheep as everyone else who did? Was it solely political calculus like is suspected of Hillary? Or, total capitulation and trust in the President?...

You might recall a certain Rose Garden ceremony with a certain flesh-haired loser Democrat who sold out the Party (and as it turns out, the country) by going behind closed doors and crafting deal with Bush and the Republicans.

But who did Dick Fucking Gephardt really screw over? David Corn reminds us...

One of Biden's better moments came in the run-up to the war with Iraq. In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration, claiming Saddam Hussein had amassed loads of WMDs that he could hand to al Qaeda for attacks against the United States, was demanding that the House and Senate grant Bush the authority to invade Iraq whenever he wanted. Rather than cave to Bush, Biden, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, worked with Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to craft an alternative: a resolution that would allow Bush to attack Iraq only for the purposes of destroying Iraq's WMDs and only after seeking UN approval. If the UN withheld permission, Bush would have to come back to Congress and prove that the threat was so "grave" that only military action could eliminate it. This was a wily legislative maneuver that could have averted a war. (And Biden told me and Michael Isikoff during an interview for our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, that he had received backdoor encouragement from Secretary of State Colin Powell.) But Biden's bipartisan measure was ultimately derailed by a fellow Democrat: House minority leader Richard Gephardt, who essentially accepted the White House's blank-check approach. After Gephardt did that, Republican senators told Biden, How can we be to the left of Dick Gephardt? "I was so angry," Biden later said. "I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man's political judgment."

Biden went on to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Which demonstrated his Washington-ness. He had tried for something better. When that failed, he, too, accepted the prevailing notion. But his pre-vote effort to create a much more limited resolution will afford the Obama-Biden ticket a small measure of cover when its foes point out that Obama's main charge against John McCain (he supported the Iraq invasion) can also be applied to his running-mate.

As Corn points out, Biden still voted for the War, but what he wanted was NOT the bullshit he ended up putting his name on.

It was a mistake, but not as glaring as would appear at first glance, and much more excusable and reconcilable.

Everyone and Their Brother on Joe Biden...

Ezra:

If vice-presidential picks are a reflection of a campaign's conclusion midway through the general election, then this is what Biden says about the Obama campaign's lessons thus far: Voters don't believe in change. Not yet, anyway, They're open to it. But they're skeptical. They need to be persuaded, cajoled, convinced.

There was a hope in the early days of the Obama campaign that simple, sharp difference would be enough. Obama was different in aesthetics and experience and age and ideas. Different would assert change. Hence the long and enlivening Kathleen Sebelius boomlet. Obama/Sebelius would have represented change. Visually, her and Obama on a stage together would have been the most powerful image of political transformation in decades. But a choice like her presupposed belief. Otherwise, you'd be adorning a cathedral that had no promise of parishioners.

As the election wore on, though, and Obama's poll numbers slackened and fell, they realized they needed to make their case. They needed an arguer. Someone able to make the case that the other guy is wrong, and Obama is right. That's, fundamentally, what Biden represents.

John Cole:

They look good together, and Biden looks like he is having the time of his life... The other thing is that Biden is a good enough of a speaker that he doesn’t seem completely over-shadowed after hearing Obama.

And I really do not think it can be underestimated how much the beltway boys love Biden. The Matthews/Russert/Imus axis of loudmouth love the guy, and that isn’t a knock on Biden.

The Rude Pundit:

Biden's son is heading to Iraq. That's the kind of political street cred it takes something like five and a half years in a prison camp to earn...

[from Friday]...Rude Pundit hopes Obama picks Biden for VP - that motherfucker's a pit pull who enjoys prancing in the bloody sprinkler left behind after he gets his jaws locked on an opponent's jugular.

Andrew Sullivan:

[liveblogging the announcement] 3.45 pm. I get it: Biden is the older, working class, Catholic guy who tells the nervous white ethnics that this guy is for real. This is about Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan. Less yuppie hope; more working class grit. No wonder they chose Springsteen to kick it off.

[Later analysis] We've learned how disastrous a vice-president can be, in the current administration. No vice-president in American history has done as much damage to national security, constitutional integrity and the moral standing of the United States as Dick Cheney. Biden has aspects of the Cheney pick - he's older, more seasoned and more adept at foreign policy than Obama. But no one imagines that Obama would delegate - and all but abdicate - critical decisions to Biden the way Bush has to Cheney.

Nonetheless, it seems obvious that Biden speaks his mind frankly, and would have real heft and independence in the office. He knows enough that foreign leaders call him in international crises. That reassures me, as we face some grim days in the coming years in the war on terror.

This strikes me, in other words, as a pick for a candidate who is already very serious about governing - and making calls that forgo a campaign buzz for the sake of the country if he wins. Putting country first, you might say.

The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Digby:

He is undisciplined and unpredictable --- but I have to tell you, I think the Obama campaign could use a little bit of that at this point. They are control freaks and I don't think it's such a bad thing for them to have a little bit of a loose cannon in their midst.

Yglesias:

The major pro is that this signals as desire to take the argument to John McCain on national security policy which is a wise decision — the American people deserve to hear a full-spectrum debate about the issues facing the country rather than a positional battle in which one party talks about the economy and the other talks about national security. It’s also the case, as I noted previously, that Biden’s ascendancy augurs well for the SUPERTRAIN even though this aspect of his record isn’t especially well-known or close to the core of his political persona.

Biden also has the lowest net worth of any U.S. Senator. Combined with Barack Obama whose prosperity is a very recent consequence of book sales, it’s definitely a ticket that can argue they have more personal acquaintance with the struggles of middle class American life than John McCain or George Bush or recent Democratic nominees like John Kerry and Al Gore. It also seems to be a pick that the elite media is enthusiastic about, which isn’t necessarily an idea I’m enthusiastic about, but I suppose definitely counts as an asset.

[...]I’d be much happier if Joe Biden had opposed the 2002 Iraq AUMF. And even beyond that, I don’t always agree with his substantive positions on the issues. But one clear asset he has is that like only a handful of other prominent Democratic leaders (Wesley Clark one among them) Biden consistently approaches national security debates with an attitude of confidence that projects a desire to win the argument rather than wriggle away from it.

Obama in his introduction:

[Biden] he picked himself up, worked harder than the other guy, and got elected to the Senate -- a young man with a family and a seemingly limitless future.

"Then tragedy struck. Joe's wife Neilia and their little girl Naomi were killed in a car accident, and their two boys were badly hurt. When Joe was sworn in as a Senator, there was no ceremony in the Capitol -- instead, he was standing by his sons in the hospital room where they were recovering. He was 30 years old.

"Tragedy tests us -- it tests our fortitude and it tests our faith. Here's how Joe Biden responded. He never moved to Washington. Instead, night after night, week after week, year after year, he returned home to Wilmington on a lonely Amtrak train when his Senate business was done. He raised his boys -- first as a single dad, then alongside his wonderful wife Jill, who works as a teacher. He had a beautiful daughter. Now his children are grown and Joe is blessed with five grandchildren. He instilled in them such a sense of public service that his son, Beau, who is now Delaware's Attorney General, is getting ready to deploy to Iraq. And he still takes that train back to Wilmington every night. Out of the heartbreak of that unspeakable accident, he did more than become a Senator -- he raised a family. That is the measure of the man standing next to me. That is the character of Joe Biden."

And the man himself, in his first day on the job

Biden: "Your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night after you put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need. That's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at."

All the Experts Agree...

Fareed Zakaria agrees with me on McCain being a danger and a jackass. Here he is on McCain's bluster about throwing Russia out of the G8 (which we can't do, btw):

What McCain has announced is momentous -- that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war. [...]

The single most important security problem that the United States faces is securing loose nuclear materials. A terrorist group can pose an existential threat to the global order only by getting hold of such material. We also have an interest in stopping proliferation, particularly by rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea. To achieve both of these core objectives -- which would make American safe and the world more secure -- we need Russian cooperation. How fulsome is that likely to be if we gratuitously initiate hostilities with Moscow? Dissing dictators might make for a stirring speech, but ordinary Americans will have to live with the complications after the applause dies down.

I always liked that Zakaria guy. Partly because he's a sensible expert on world affairs, and partly because he's the Indian Willem Dafoe.

Vice Versus

People all over the blogosphere are crapping their drawers over Obama's forthcoming-any-time-now pick to fill out the ticket. Why is he letting the suspense build? What does it mean? How long will he wait? Will it doom or save his chances?

First of all, there is no candidate that is perfect. None. Most have downsides (Biden, Webb, Richardson)—some significant (Hillary—the definition of high risk, high reward—could be huge in either direction). And those without foreseeable downside (Sebelius, Bayh, Dodd)? Low impact, no upside.

I'm not sure how much if any impact this pick will have on the election, but looking forward to actually serving, I can tell you the only one of them I feel strongly that I DON'T want as Vice President—Hillary Clinton.

As for the politico.com column flying around that "it won't be Hillary because she was never vetted for V.P" is garbage. You can be sure that Obama did all the oppo research needed months ago, when he was actually in a deathmatch with her.

On the Ground

I just checked to see if there were any Obama campaign events happening in Western North Carolina anytime soon...


Seems there are 44 events within a 50-mile radius of Asheville. Now, I know Asheville is a liberal zone (for the South) but that's pretty good. It gets rural in a hurry around here, and there are probably plenty of areas that lean Republican.

What's coming up for local McCain supporters?


That's what I like to see.

"A noun, a verb and P.O.W."

You might have noticed the McCain campaign trot out the candidate's history as a P.O.W. to explain or excuse any number of issues—despite the fact that the campaign and McCain himself maintain that "they don't like to talk about it."

It's their go-to trump card and applies to everything from:

• His favorite football team
• His healthcare plan
• His publicly humiliating his wife
• The possibility of his cheating in Saturday's Q&A forum.

But today, they played the P.O.W. card in an instance I thought there's no way they could wedge it in...

Yesterday, McCain was asked during an interview about the economy, "how many homes he owns." He couldn't answer the question (link).

Seriously. He didn't know. His actual response was, “I think — I’ll have my staff get back to you.”

Obama pounced in his speech later that day and with an excellent (and lightning-fast) response ad (video here). The McCain Camp's first counter was with the tired and dishonest arugula and preposterous Hawaii elitism attacks on Obama. But today they went the distance...

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

At what point will the media start to treat this like the bullshit it is? I think Joe Biden's debate riff (down thread) was the tipping point against Guiliani's 9/11 rhetoric that allowed the media to put aside the fact that while 9/11 itself wasn't funny, Guiliani's abuse of the event had officially become a running joke.

I think it's safe for Stewart and Colbert to take the first cracks at this, and it will spread from there.

UPDATE: Added Toles cartoon. h/t Sullivan.

Biden, Your Time

I know I said Joe Biden was dead to me after the odious Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, but I can't help but feeling that the Obama campaign—and Democrats in general—need someone willing to throw a freaking punch.

Evan Bayh? Screw that. If we're going with a Senator that voted for the Iraq War, he better bring more to the table than Bayh. Joe Biden has a fastball, and he ain't afraid to throw it.



UPDATE: Kevin Drum concurs. (See, Toast?)

What's the Deal?

The lack of a good NPR station here in Asheville is pushing us towards the purchase of a satellite radio...Anybody got anything to say on that? Since we want the NPR, it has to be Sirius.

UPDATE: What I really want is a radio with TiVo capability...who's going get on that development and make a fortune?

Reading Assignment

Publius at Obsidian Wings.

The Dangerous Warmongering John McCain

A taste:

In short, his is a world of good versus evil, where threatening and using force is always necessary, and where wildly diverse countries are lumped together as evil “autocracies.” No matter the country (Serbia, Iraq, Georgia), no matter the circumstances — the problem is always the same (evil), the solution always the same (threaten or use force).

[...] this is arguably the most dangerous aspect of the McCain “Doctrine” — the tendency to quickly classify things we don’t like as “evil”. Indeed, this is precisely what we’re seeing with Georgia — and we’ll see it again in a McCain administration. The assumption of “evil” is what leads to overbroad responses — after all, everything should be on the table if we’re fighting evil (this same initial assumption leads to torture, lawbreaking, etc.).

Read the whole damn thing. This guy is fucking frightening. Pat Buchanan (!) said that John McCain will make Dick Cheney look like Ghandi. That's starting to sound like an understatement. As cleek put it in the comments at ObWi, "he's not running for Bush's 3rd term; he thinks Bush was a lightweight."

It's the proliferation, Stupid.

Andrew Sullivan gets to the heart of the biggest danger of this whole Russia/Georgia dust-up:

[...] There is a balance to be struck between the West's obvious interest in getting Russian cooperation in the war on Jihadist terror and preventing Russian meddling in its near-abroad. There's a trade-off here. And allowing Russia its traditional sphere of influence may be much less of a headache than trying to police its every move and losing cooperation on such vital matters as securing loose nukes.

What worries me is that McCain's eagerness for more conflict in the world - pushing Russia and China into a corner - is not in the best interests of the United States. It may be moral; it may be exciting; it may provide the great national purpose McCain thinks we all need to feel. But it ignores the hard trade-offs involved, and perpetuates the whole with-us-or-against us bluster of the last eight years. We need more of that? More enemies? Less diplomacy? More conflict?

For the last seven years, Republicans and their neo-con lackeys (masters?) have trumped up the threat of Islamic jihad and/or the Axis of Evil to be the "threat of the 21st century." Cheney and his military-industrial buddies have mired us down in conventional ground wars that never needed to happen at the expense of the less testicular (and less-profitable) work of diplomacy and cooperation to secure the United States from the only REAL threat out there—

Proliferation.

"Evil" countries like North Korea and Iran want a nuclear weapon as a deterrent. Not to use on us, or even Israel. And since we went into Iraq, they are understandably working double-time to get one. Having a nuke is the ace in the hole that would ensure the next President like Bush (um, McCain?) will keep the hell out of their country. If Iran suddenly announced a successful nuclear weapon, do you think they would actually launch it? Of course not.

For that matter, if Saddam actually had WMD, do you think Bush would have invaded? I don't. The threat was the pretext for war.

The real danger to the U.S. isn't the march of the Red Army or small-time thugs in Iraq—it's the nuclear weapons and material floating around in many of the former Soviet republics getting into the wrong hands...you know, like the hands of the guy responsible for 9/11 who's still at large.

So for eight fucking years the Administration has all but ignored the nukes that already exist in favor of bluster about nuclear fantasies of a few bad governments. They've done next to nothing about the supply, and even less about the guy with the demand—Osama Bin Laden.

--

And McCain is even worse. He's a military guy. Steeled in a Cold War mentality. A military guy who's waited his whole life to get to the position that upstart, but connected, punk from Texas stole from him eight years ago. He's not interested in being President during a time of peace and prosperity—that shit is for pussies—he longs to be a War President. And nothing would suit him better than a resurgent binary struggle against an enemy like Russia.

Russia. The country we need to cooperate most closely with to control proliferation.

Excellent.

Georgia (Not) On My Mind

Wondering what's going on with the little war over in Russia? Don't listen to John McCain—he's full of crap. Read The War Nerd for some entertainment with your information.

UPDATE: Publius wonders how what the Russians in Georgia is any different than what the neocons here want from our government and, in particular, Israel's...

Because we’re so good, we can use force whenever and wherever we want. We won’t be excessive of course, because we’re constitutionally incapable of being wrong.

These militant nationalists also share a paranoid sense of decline. The great nation is always in danger of being overrun or embarrassed. There’s always some threat among us. Thus, there’s always some need to re-establish our strength and greatness – preferably through force. Because we’re so good.

My point is that the problem with the Russia response is, at bottom, the same problem with the response to the response. That problem is nationalism. Russia is doing exactly what the neocons want America and Israel to do.

Generally speaking, though, nationalism is almost always the problem. Looking abroad, we usually find ourselves at odds with various countries' nationalist wings...

[...]In America, though, the ideological soulmates of these people are the Bill Kristols of the world. Like the militant nationalists in every country everywhere, they think their country is the best country. They like clamoring for war to fight decline and to demonstrate strength.

If anything, though, the Russian nationalists have a leg up on the Iraq War cheerleaders because their invasion actually served a strategic military purpose. Allowing Georgia into NATO would be a humiliating disaster for Russia. It would also be a genuine military threat (particularly for a country still traumatized by WW2). Further, there was actually a military attack on Russia interests.

In Iraq, by contrast, there was no strategic threat. No attack. Nothing. But we invaded, bombed the crap out of their cities, and deposed their sovereign (if despicable) government.

To be clear, I deplore what Russia is doing. But I’ll do without the outrage from Bush and McCain, thank you. Russia is simply implementing tactics that are part and parcel of these men’s worldview and foreign policy philosophy – i.e., the philosophy of militant nationalism. Sometimes we call it neoconservatism.

Yeah, pretty much.

What McCain and others deliberately leave out of the discussion is that Georgia picked this fight. It is a total mismatch and they botched it horribly (failing to cut-off the tunnel?), and now they are getting their ass summarily kicked.

Russia, is overdoing it and punishing Georgia severely, but this ain't the Soviets on the march—no matter how much McCain pines for another Cold War.

UPDATE: An excellent on-the-ground analysis of the Georgian conflict. Plenty of blame to go around. Money quote:

Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus where the Georgian tail was wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in extending NATO membership, or even the promise of membership, to countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend.

In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia, while the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.

Obama has mistakenly jumped on the NATO-for-Georgia bandwagon as well. It's not a good idea.

Obama's REAL Birth Certificate Located...

Click to embiggen...



The best part? I'll probably get this as an email from my wingnut uncle tomorrow.

[h/t: Jesse at Pandagon. His triumphant return is the best thing to happen to the internets all year.]

Future Product Safety Inspector

Check Mrs. F's site for the combined hilarity and wisdom of Kid Furious...