From the August 18th speech to the National VFW convention by John McCain: "Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president."
So, can we agree that it is wrong to have the ambition to be president? McCain certainly states it as a negative in this case. Let's assume for the moment that this is actually what he meant, and see where it takes us.
In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."
No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?
That's the date that I and many here will probably have a more clear picture of the electorate landscape and how the Obama campaign is doing. I've tried to be patient and will continue to be patient. I think polls after the Democratic and Republican conventions plus two or three weeks will provide us with a more clear landscape on where the electorate is going. However, there are a few things that are bothering me now and I would just like to share.
Yesterday, MoveOn and the Center for American Progress teamed up to call out Senator McCain and Congressional Republicans for pretending that handing out huge sacks of cash to Big Oil constitutes an energy policy. CAP released a report estimating the value of subsidies and tax breaks McCain supports for Big Oil over the next five years at $39 billion. Local MoveOn volunteers around the country released the report, and called for those tax dollars to be spent on clean energy alternatives, including wind and geothermal power, home weatherization, conservation and public transit.
It has become a constant theme in McCain’s speeches. Taxes are not too low; spending is too high. If we just eliminate “pork barrel spending” we can cut taxes and balance the budget – “no pain, all gain.” Republicans have long loved claiming that the budget can be balanced without any sacrifice on the part of anyone. In order to make his point, McCain has taken to constantly referring to 3 million dollars spent to study the DNA of bears in Montana as an example of government waste. So what are the facts about this study?
Excuse me for this rant, but I'm quite angry with the lack of aggressiveness in the Obama campaign's responses to John McCain's personal attacks and the toll they've taken in some polls.
I've done everything I can to give Barack and his staff the benefit of the doubt, but based on what I've seen, the candidate is DEFINITELY being betrayed by those around him in not generating more aggressive responses to McCain's campaign tactics.
Barack deserves far better than this, and the American people deserve far better than a party that scares people every four years and screws them afterward.
More below.
I don't find much to quibble with on Slinkerwink's post critical of the Obama press machine (though I think the calls to fire Burton are premature). To my mind, the Obama Camp has been suffering though a number of missteps since returning from his overseas trip:
Obviously Obama is exceedingly unlikely to win Utah. But the fact that he is garnering more donations in the most solidly red state in the nation, not to mention one that border's McCain's (and my) home state, is heartening at the very least. While funds don't guarantee a win, it certainly doesn't put McCain in the best of positions after his convention, when he has to (is supposed to) take public financing only.
Sometimes there are moments when you realize things, sort of an awakening and then that leads to other thoughts and other realizations. Today I had one of those moments, one that clarified and defined for me the core reason I am strongly pro-choice. But, before we get to the moment, a few words on the journey to this moment.
I was born and raised Catholic, and yes, I am still a Catholic, actually part of the "Catholic Democrat" organization. My religious upbringing included 12 years of catholic schools. While things may be different today, at the time I went to these schools I was taught how to think, how to reason, there was no memorization of bible passages, just lessons about what it meant to be a Catholic.
So over at the post announcing the launch of my book, I saw a couple of people freaking out -- freaking out!!!! -- that McCain has the lead in some national polls.
So I sauntered over to Pollster.com to see what all the hoopla was about, and clicked through to their national polls page. Then I rolled my eyes when I saw that the poll causing such aneurysms was ....
A Zogby poll.
Some people are frackin' hopeless. Really. At the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Ras has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times.
Look, the race is tightening at the national level, but it's much less tight when you look at the state-by-state numbers that, you know, actually decide the presidency. So while it's not exactly a cakewalk, freaking out over single polls from shitty, discredited pollsters like Zogby is pretty pathetic.
We've got the veep announcements and the conventions to get through, and then the race will start in earnest. Be zen. Freaking out over crappy pollsters is just lame. Keep your eye on the composite -- Obama still leads that by 1.4 percent -- and maintain perspective -- McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50.
I'll be officially worried when McCain shows the ability to break that barrier of support. If he suddenly starts hovering in the upper 40s, then we might have trouble. But ultimately, this is a state-by-state battle. And in the electoral college fight, Obama still has a solid lead -- without even taking into account the ground machine Obama is building (pollsters aren't).
There are only a few PB afficianados on this site, and by afficianados I mean people who are willing to hold their noses past the neo-con stink to get at the traditional conservative perspective. Certainly Buchanan has crossed the line too many times. But often, and especially with regard to foreign policy, Buchanan makes sense, like yesterday's article "Who Started Cold War II?"
Someone who can call out to the throngs of disaffected and disenfranchised people; Democrat or Republican, black, white, brown, red, yellow, rich or poor, young or old. Those who are completely and utterly fed up with the current political system.
The revolving door in the White House has ruined politics, ruined countless lives due to the malfeasance of the people in charge, ruined the hopes of lower middle class and lower class peoples who want to better themselves, ruined our national reputation among our allies overseas, ruined our ability to back up our words with actions when need be.
What we are witnessing today isn't the result of George W. Bush's mistakes and utter disregard for the rule of law. On the contrary, this country has been on a slow downward decline and it began not just 8 years ago, but over 40 years ago when Nixon was running for office in 1968.
The political career of John McCain has been made possible by a series of political maneuvers and a skillful public relations campaign, creating the juggernaut that I like to call The Legend of John McCainTM. There are many facets of The LegendTM, but the base of the entire concept lies in John McCain’s military service. The deification of his service and of his time in Vietnam as a prisoner of war has been constructed into a nearly impenetrable firewall against scrutiny, and have also served, along with media complicity, as rose colored glasses to the public throughout his political career. Up until recently, no one could ever think of questioning any part of The LegendTM without facing serious public backlash. Fortunately, his candidacy for President has allowed and demanded closer scrutiny of his history, and of the phenomenon that is The Legend of John McCainTM.
Make no mistkae about it, John McCain wants to drill. And now, even Obama is open to "compromise" on this issue, despite the ecological pitfalls. Americans must make a critical decision, save a few extra gas dollars now, or face ...
