Capitol Hill, Den of Marxists

Years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget, the Capitol Visitor Center has finally opened, presenting a thumbnail view of the Capitol Building's history and what Congress does.

But it wouldn't be America if someone didn't like it.

Jim DeMint, a Republican (naturally) senator from South Carolina, issued a statement on his website blasting the new visitor center for rampant leftism and insufficient fealty to religion:

The current CVC displays are left-leaning and in some cases distort our true history. Exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society's problems. This is a clear departure from acknowledging that Americans' rights "are endowed by their Creator" and stem from "a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." Instead, the CVC's most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government. Visitors will enter reading a large engraving that states, "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation's real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America's God-given blessings.

DeMint appears to see his job not as representing his constituents, or making policy, but rather to ensure that Americans have the correct religious viewpoint. He is apparently ignorant of the simple fact that not all of us share his religious beliefs. Nor does he know (or care) that in America, church and state and kept separate to protect each from encroachment by the other.

The senator needs a refresher course.

God, Head of Security

People from Appalachian states like Kentucky have an image of being ignorant, inbred yahoos who substitute pithy slogans for actual thinking, while people who live in these states wonder why they can't shake that image.

Well, maybe it's because of things like Chapter 39G, Section 10, Paragraph 2(a) of the Kentucky Revised Statutes. Section 10 in effect presents the job description of the state Homeland Security director, and includes such duties as coordinating with the federal Department of Homeland Security to protect the state against various threats.

So far so good. But before all that mundane stuff comes a paragraph detailing the director's prime duty:

Publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3) in its agency training and educational materials. The executive director shall also be responsible for prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3);

In case you're wondering, Chapter 39A, Section 285, Paragraph 3 reads as follows:

The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln's historic March 30, 1863, Presidential Proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy's November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: "For as was written long ago: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' "

Yes, the main job of the state Homeland Security director, even before he gets to all that stuff about, you know, security, is to praise God.

Proving that some people in the state government rise above the prevailing gene pool, neither the department's website nor its mission statement give the legally required credit to the Almighty. State Rep. Tom Riner, who inserted the God Clause back in 2002, is having a hissy fit over this minor oversight.

Perhaps the state government expects a tent revival to ward off terrorists. What next? Will all state residents receive crosses, garlic and holy water? (And do crosses even work to ward off Muslims anyway?)

This is why people think states like Kentucky are filled with ignorant hillbillies.

The Circular Firing Squad Assembles

With the election over, the knives have come out. Yes, open warfare has broken out between the staffers of John McCain and Sarah Palin, each one blaming the other for Tuesday's loss.

McCain's people let slip to the media that Palin was rather fuzzy on some basic facts. For example, she thought Africa was a country rather than a continent and she didn't know which countries are party to the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Answer: the United States, Canada and Mexico.) They also said that her now-infamous shopping spree was far more expensive than previously disclosed and that many of the clothes have mysteriously disappeared.

Even Fox News - Fox News! - has found it hard to defend her.

In retaliation, Palin's people have gone crying to Rush Limbaugh and the nuttiest of the wingnuts, complaining that all the people saying bad things about this poor helpless woman are just a bunch of sore-loser poopyheads. And the real wingnuts in the GOP have vowed not only to boycott Fox News, but to push all the insufficiently pure out of the party, leaving only the true believers behind.

Yes, they're serious. The American people rejected on Tuesday a Republican Party controlled by the crazies, so the solution is quite simple: more crazies!

I, for one, welcome a GOP controlled by people who are firmly dedicated to denying reality. After all, that's a sure-fire recipe for permanent Democratic control of our government.

The Morning After

Wow.

Just - wow.

What a night. After eight years of disastrous government, of endless and useless war, of a completely preventable economic collapse, the grownups finally got elected last night. The American people soundly rejected the fear-and-smear politics that has marked the GOP for the last twenty years, and told Karl Rove and his acolytes to go back to their caves.

As John McCain made his concession speech last night, you could see it in his face - the crushing realization that had he not jettisoned his principles and caved in to the God-guns-and-gays wing of the party, he might well have won the election. But no, he allowed Sarah Palin to be foisted onto the ticket and handed control of the campaign over to the crazies.

And now we have the results.

Barack Obama gave us real-world solutions to our domestic and international crises, while McCain could only mumble about Joe the Plumber and Bill Ayers.

The GOP sneered at Obama's Ivy League education as "elitist," portraying Palin's six-schools-in-five-years college career as something to be emulated. What they never figured out is that when it comes to important things like government, we want our leaders to be not just good, but the best.

Let's suppose you get very sick and have to be rushed to the hospital. What sort of doctor do you want working on you? Do you want someone who went to Harvard Medical School, been board-certified in numerous specialties, keeps up with the latest research, regularly takes refresher courses, and generally makes sure that she's the best damn doctor around?

Or do you want someone who graduated at the bottom of her class from some fourth-rate school, barely passed her medical boards, and just manages to avoid losing her license every other month?

The tale of the Regular Joe solving everyone's problems with some down-home common sense makes for a good story, but in the real world we see what that gets us - a government that lurches from disaster to disaster, consumed by the arrogance of power.

With the Democrats taking control of the White House as well as both houses of Congress, we now have a real chance to restore economic and social justice to America. No more trickle-down economics that ends up trickling on the people who need help the most. A strong middle class makes it better for everyone. And even though there are bumps along the way (e.g., California's apparent passage of the ballot initiative banning gay marriage) it's time to treat all Americans as first-class citizens.

So let's roll up our sleeves and get to work. We've come a long way, but we've got a long way to go.

One Day to Go

Election Day is tomorrow, and that means both campaigns are pulling out all the stops. It is said that the final few days of any campaign tells you far more about the person running for office than all the speeches and debates can possibly do. Let's compare:

• Barack Obama bought thirty minutes of prime time television to tell America in plain English how he will rework the nation's tax policies, work to fix the economic crisis, and rebuild our shattered international image while dealing with potential threads.
• John McCain sent out his surrogates to call Obama disloyal.

Quite a difference, no?

But now it's all up to you. No matter who you support, get out to the polls tomorrow and cast your ballot. Make a difference. Exercise your right to steer our nation's future.

Vote!

Go to Hell. Go Directly to Hell. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.

It had to happen. With just one week left before Election Day, the GOP wingnuts have gone completely insane. They are throwing anything and everything they can think of at Barack Obama in a last desperate attempt at scaring people into voting for John McCain.

To wit, see Christian talk-radio host Janet Porter's latest column, in which she claims in stark us-versus-them tones that "You Cannot Be a Christian and Vote for Obama:"

[T]his election is not about race. It's not about the economy. It's about obeying God...

Be forewarned: If you willfully disobey God on life and marriage because of race or false hope for the economy, you will usher in the kind of change that brought the Soviet Union to collapse.

But the warning goes far beyond that. To those who think that God's grace gives them license to willfully disobey Him without consequences – think again:

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!' (Matthew 7:21-23)"

Yes, the GOP's God-guns-and-gays wing really is threatening Americans with hellfire and brimstone should we vote for Obama. Promising mayhem for voting the "wrong" way is nothing new for the Republicans, but I think this is the first time they have actually threatened us with eternal damnation.

And then she goes even further, saying that anyone who does not vote for McCain cannot be a Christian: "[O]bey Him in the voting booth and out of it. If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian."

Last I heard, God hasn't endorsed anyone this year.

Religious hatred has no place in American elections or anywhere else, and it only goes to show how desperate they are that they would stoop to these methods.

McCain is toast and they know it, so the Republicans have nothing to lose. But regardless of how McCain may go down in flames next week, such tactics may well ensure that the party goes down in flames with him.

Mud Will Be Flung Tonight

With eight days to go, John McCain's campaign clearly realizes it's over. Staffers have begun circulating their resumés, a senior McCain aide accused Sarah Palin of "going rogue," and the finger-pointing is rampant over at campaign HQ.

McCain and Palin have absolutely nothing positive to say on their own behalf - and that was before the story of Palin's $150,000 luxury shopping spree (paid for by the Republican Party) broke.

Remember John Edwards' infamous $400 haircut, about which the GOP spent weeks fulminating? The McCain campaign outspent him by 37,500%.

And the wretched excess for this supposed "plain folk hockey mom" just keeps on going - during just the first two weeks in October, the party shelled out $22,800 on Palin's makeup and another $10,000 on hairstyling. With Newsweek reporting that many GOP donors are "furious" over how their contributions were spent, the party seems in real danger of alienating their most deep-pocketed backers.

So the campaign has gone all-in on the mudslinging.

Palin's appeal last week to the "pro-America" parts of the country blew up in her face and she was forced to apologize, but the campaign continues to depict Barack Obama as a threatening Other. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who last distinguished herself by bragging that her Minnesota constituents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, even called Obama "anti-American" and demanded a media exposé of similar senators and representatives.

A few weeks ago, Obama told the much-exploited "Joe the Plumber" that he wants to "spread the wealth around" rather than have it concentrated in only a few hands. So naturally, the McCain campaign seized on Obama's comment to paint him as some sort of secret Communist. The usual suspects (Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc) did their jobs admirably, parroting GOP talking points ad nauseum. Orlando TV reporter Barbara West even quoted Karl Marx's famous definition of Socialism ("from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs") and asked Joe Biden on Thursday, "how is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" (Biden's response was to laugh and ask, "Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?")

So now we see what the GOP really boils down to. With all their usual wedge issues (terrorism, gay marriage, etc) having failed, with a barely-there candidate and a loose-cannon running mate, and with an economy in which income inequality in some major American cities is at third-world levels, all they have left is hate and fear. But the more hate and fear the GOP unleashes at Democrats, the more the American people turn away in revulsion.

Of course, the Republicans haven't yet figured that out. And the longer they take, the bigger the Democratic victory next week will be.

It's Over

Twenty years ago, Michael Dukakis blew his chance at being elected president when he was asked whether he would support executing someone who (theoretically) raped and murdered his wife Kitty. Already seen as so mild-mannered to be almost comatose, his response was to launch into a dry spiel on why he opposed capital punishment. His campaign promptly went into a death spiral from which it never recovered.

We may have seen John McCain similarly self-destruct during last night's debate. Smirking and snickering, giving his rictus-like grin, blinking furiously as he clearly struggled to hold his temper, the Republican nominee came across as little more than a cranky old man. One half expected him to jump up from his chair and yell at Barack Obama to get off his lawn.

From his relentless invoking of a supposedly undecided "Joe the Plumber" (who, as it turns out, is neither undecided nor a plumber) to his insulting "air quotes" when rejecting health-based exceptions to an abortion ban, McCain all but poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. (And let's not even get into his exploiting his Bangladesh-born daughter to bash Obama over abortion. As a parent via adoption myself, I find that crass and tacky at the very least.)

The real John McCain was on display last night for all to see - someone who is painfully out of touch with the real world and has no real interest in finding out about it. Safely ensconced within one of his dozen or so homes, he has no clue that there is a whole country outside his little bubble where people agonize over how to pay the mortgage and parents go hungry so their kids can eat. And since he has absolutely nothing to offer apart from yet another budget-busting tax cut for the rich, he has no choice but to try and distract people with manufactured non-issues.

When he once again brings up one-time radical William Ayres, no one outside the rabid GOP wingnuttia cares. Even fewer people are at all sympathetic when he whines about being criticized for the anti-Obama shouts of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at his rallies.

And when he does nothing but throw tons of mud at Obama, blame the target for fighting back and then immediately claim that "of course, I've been talking about the economy," he comes across as confused and bitter.

With McCain's campaign now sagging into a nosedive, his staffers are predictably turning on each other. Some are blasting the candidate's reckless selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate and letting her run wild, calling her an "albatross" and a "total disaster." Every time she accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists," McCain's poll numbers drop ever lower.

Too late, they realize that ignoring the real issues which confront Americans and instead running the campaign from a sewer is the contemporary equivalent of Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech at the 1992 GOP convention. It's something that may fire up your core supporters but leaves the rest of us aghast.

The McCain campaign is toast. It's over.

McCain's Señor Moment

After all these months on the campaign trail, it is painfully obvious that John McCain is a spin doctor's worst nightmare. His constant confusions, misstatements and gaffes have dogged him all the way, and while the press has largely given him a pass on it, they're piling up to the point where they can no longer be ignored.

But he really outdid himself this week. Interviewed for the Spanish-language radio network Union Radio, McCain was asked whether he would meet with Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero if elected.

"I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion," he said. So far so good.

But then he went off the rails.

"And by the way," he continued, "President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very, very tough fight against the drug cartels. I am glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. And I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders to the White House."

The question was not about Mexico.

Asked again whether he would invite Zapatero, McCain dug himself in deeper. "All I can tell you is I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region."

Spain is not in Latin America.

At this point, the candidate was so clearly lost that the interviewer took pity on him and tried explicitly to get him back on track. "Okay, what about Europe?" she said. "I'm talking about the President of Spain."

"What about me what?" McCain replied.

Oh, dear God. The man seems to have no idea where he is or what he's talking about. I can excuse his not knowing the name of the Spanish president, but he really should have boned up on it beforehand - after all, he was going on Spanish-language radio.

But does he really not know where Spain is?

The campaign went into full panic mode, rolling out its talking heads to insist that McCain is not suffering from dementia but he actually intended to call Zapatero a dictator. (For the record, Zapatero was democratically elected and is committed to democratic government in Spain.)

Both explanations are dreadful. If you believe the first one, then the GOP nominee is clearly not playing with a full deck and would be a disaster as president. But if you believe the second one, then McCain is dedicated to continuing the Bush policy of ticking off every ally we have in the world, meaning he'd still be a disaster as president.

There is, of course, a third explanation - that McCain simply misheard the question (although the interviewer repeated it more than once) or got confused because previous questions had concerned Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and other South American leaders who disagree with the United States. But that's not very reassuring either, because one expects the president to know one country's leader from another. Which brings us back to the same question of whether McCain is firing on all cylinders.

In any event, rather than simply admit that McCain got it wrong, his handlers instead created a diplomatic kerfluffle by claiming that he deliberately snubbed the president of Spain. The Spanish embassy released a statement saying, "The only plausible explanation for McCain not wanting to meet with Zapatero, is that, like Bush, he is still angry about Spain pulling its troops out of Iraq in 2004. If McCain carries that much of a grudge then how in the world will he rebuild our relationship with Europe, as he has said he would do."

Great choice, guys.

With six and a half weeks left until the election, only God knows what else he will come up with.

Big Bad Maverick

It appears that the Maverick™ is having a tough time of it lately. Whether it's his claim that only people who make more than $5 million a year can be called "rich" or his insistence that our economic problems are merely "psychological," John McCain seems to be a little, well, out of touch with what's going on in the world.

Over the weekend, the venerable investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch almost went the same route only to be assimilated by Bank of America. Wall Street responded by sending the Dow down by more than 500 points.

And McCain's reaction to all this was to proclaim that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

One might suspect that he hasn't been taking his Geritol.

Barack Obama immediately pointed out that McCain is clearly and "disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans."

McCain struck back, and he did it mostly by whining.

"This economic crisis is not the fault of the American people," he said. "Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world. My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong. No one can match an American worker. Our workers sell more goods to more markets than any other on earth. Our workers have always been the strength of our economy, and they remain the strength of our economy today."

Translation: that mean Negro is saying bad things about the people who actually do the work.

Where did the straight-talking McCain go? The John McCain who was always eager to stand up for what's right, even if that meant going against his own party, is dead and gone. In his place is someone who refuses to accept criticism and take his lumps when he deserves it. Instead, this new and definitely not improved McCain always hides behind something or someone.

You can't say anything about him because he was a POW. You can't say anything about Sarah Palin because that's sexist. You can't say anything about the Iraq or Afghanistan wars because you're not supporting the troops. And you can't say anything about the economy because you're attacking the working class.

Meanwhile, his lying has gotten so egregious that Karl Rove - Karl Rove! - called him on it.

It appears that the Straight Talk Express has broken down, and it ain't moving again.

Book-Banning Experience

As the GOP faithful rallied round Sarah Palin this week, accusing the media of sexism for daring to question her qualifications and background, yet another in a very long line of disturbing stories emerged from her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

It appears that once she got elected, Palin asked the town librarian if she would purge the library of supposedly inappropriate books. Aghast, Mary Ellen Emmons immediately rejected the demand and Palin responded by firing her. But since Emmons was a popular figure in town, there was a backlash and Palin backed down, reinstating her.

And so the tale of Sarah Palin, caribou hunter and would-be book banner, becomes just a little more sordid. Last month, her church hosted the leader of Jews for Jesus, which would have been blared on Fox News etc. for months on end had it been Barack Obama's church. Add to that the mess over her firing the head of Alaska's state police in retaliation for his refusing to fire her sister's ex-husband, her claim that the Iraq War is a "task that is from God," and more. It just seems to get worse and worse.

(The McCain campaign knows they've got a potential time bomb on their hands in Palin. That's why they have barred the press from asking her any questions in interviews or Q&A sessions. Instead, reporters will be restricted to receiving talking points via the same scripted, choreographed, spoon-fed pabulum that the rest of will receive - i.e., speeches.)

Of course, her nasty and condescending speech Wednesday night only went to show why she was the pick of the Christian Right. Whether it was her sneering references to Barack Obama as a community organizer or her scornful description of the Democratic nominee "turning back the waters and healing the planet," she displayed the mentality that defines the Republican Party. Can't think of a good reason why people should vote for you? No problem! Attack the other guy as an uppity Negro who hates decent white God-fearing Americans.

And considering how the McCain campaign can't seem to get anything right - for example, their confusion of Walter Reed Middle School in California with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington - it will only get dirtier right up to Election Day.

Better stock up on soap now.

Eagleton Redux?

Back in 1972, George McGovern announced the picking of Thomas Eagleton as his running mate to widespread press coverage. Two weeks later, Eagleton was unceremoniously dumped from the ticket - also to widespread press coverage - once it was revealed that he had undergone electroshock therapy and been hospitalized numerous times for psychiatric problems. McGovern never recovered from the fiasco and went on to get creamed in November.

Are we seeing the same pattern here?

Ever since John McCain announced his VP pick of Sarah Palin on Friday, unpleasant facts have been coming out of the woodwork:

• Palin and her staff pressured public safety commissioner Walt Monegan to fire a state trooper who just happened to be in a bitter divorce and custody fight with Palin's sister. When he refused, Palin fired Monegan and replaced him with a known sexual harasser who lasted only two weeks before being pushed out himself.
  
• Vetting was at best minimal - the McCain campaign knew nothing about the trooper scandal even though it had been big news in Alaska for weeks, and the vetting process seems to have consisted only of a single chat between McCain and Palin.
• She has no foreign-policy experience at all, with Cindy McCain and Fox News being reduced to claiming that she does know about foreign policy because Alaska is right next to Russia.
• As mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she fired the town police chief for supporting her opponent in the 1996 election, then was almost recalled in the ensuing uproar.
  
• She publicly said she has no idea what the vice president's job is.
• She admitted that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant. (Ironically, Palin opposes actual sex education in schools in favor of "abstinence education," which has repeatedly been shown not to work.)
  

And if all that wasn't enough, there are also widespread rumors that Trig, the family's youngest child, is actually Bristol's, but was passed off as Sarah's.

So with signals of a looming train wreck all around us, just why was Palin selected? Putting aside all the beauty-queen and May-December wisecracks, it appears she was picked for two reasons and two only.

1. She is a woman (or, as Samantha Bee nailed it on The Daily Show, a "vagina-American") whom the GOP hopes can win the support of former Hillary Clinton voters despite having positions completely opposite to Clinton's.
   
2. She is a faithful devotee of the Christian Right, falling into line on everything from banning abortion to opposing gay marriage to teaching creationism as science in public schools.
   

Indeed, there are rampant murmurings that McCain actually wanted Joe Lieberman or Mitt Romney as his running mate, but both of those were nixed by the Christian Right, without whose support he cannot win in November. In other words, she was picked to convince the jihadist wing of the GOP that he will do whatever they want as long as they vote for him.

Not only that, the contempt shown for women embodied in the Palin pick is staggering. The Republicans genuinely believe that women are so dumb that they will automatically support anyone with two X chromosomes, regardless of her actual positions on anything. Poll results show that women realize this, and are not pleased.

So yes, McCain got some momentary good press out of the Palin announcement. But this seems to be turning into a nightmare very very quickly.

VPILF

John McCain has successfully (at least for the moment) stolen Barack Obama's post-convention thunder by naming Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. But seeing as how she's held elective office for less than two years, has zero foreign-policy experience and is even under investigation in her home state for firing the head of the state police when he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law, she may be more trouble to the McCain campaign than she's worth.

But someone didn't wait for the announcement to start sounding off on her. On August 4, someone registered a website domain at http://www.vpilf.com touting Palin for the VP job. Now it just so happens that Palin is a former beauty-pageant contestant, and "VPILF" stands for "Vice President I'd Like to F***."

Really.

Now I started wondering who was behind the website, so I did a little digging. It seems that according to the registration info, it was set up through a masking company in Arizona:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: VPILF.COM
Created on: 04-Aug-08
Expires on: 04-Aug-09
Last Updated on: 04-Aug-08

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration VPILF.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Technical Contact:
Private, Registration VPILF.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Domain servers in listed order:
NS47.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS48.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Domains by Proxy is a company whereupon anyone can register a website and keep their personal details private. So with the domain registered in Arizona, and the GOP nominee being from Arizona, is it too outrageous to wonder whether this is an arms-length ploy by the McCain campaign to "sex up" their VP candidate?

Considering that Karl Rove's winged monkeys are running the McCain campaign, that certainly doesn't seem out of the question. On the other hand, it seems remarkably shabby for even McCain's own handlers to treat Palin as just another pretty face.

On the other other hand, they've pulled stuff like this before. Is there more to this story?

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

For what it's worth, I never thought Barack Obama would pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate in the fall election, not after all the bad blood during the primary season. But now that Obama has tapped Joe Biden, John McCain has jumped in with both feet. Yes, he quickly unveiled a campaign ad accusing Obama of telling Hillary's supporters to go jump in the lake.

"She won millions of votes but isn't on his ticket," the ad's voiceover says. "Why? For speaking the truth." The way McCain makes it sound, Obama is a thin-skinned elitist who couldn't handle her criticism of him. And he probably hates women to boot.

This is, of course, a crock. If Obama had picked Hillary as his VP, McCain would doubtless have run a different ad reminding voters of all the supposed "Clinton scandals" back in the 1990s, questioning Obama's judgment at selecting such a person to be his running mate.

This is not the first time the McCain campaign has played this game. Back when Obama made his tour of the Middle East and Europe, McCain ran an ad accusing Obama of dissing wounded soldiers in a military hospital in Germany because he didn't meet with them. Only after the ad ran - and it was shown that the Pentagon had advised Obama not to visit the soldiers - was it revealed that the GOP had prepared another ad just in case.

You see, if Obama had visited the troops, McCain would have run an ad accusing Obama of doing so purely for political purposes.

Visit the troops: get accused of using them as props.

Don't visit the troops: get accused of dissing them.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

And Everybody Hates the Jews

Rep. Steve Cohen is a Democrat who represents Memphis, Tennessee in Congress, and is doing a pretty good job of it. He is so popular that the GOP isn't bothering to run a candidate this year, not even a sacrificial one. But he does have a primary election today, and one of his opponents has run what just may be the nastiest ad of the year:



"Our churches?" "Our churches?" Nikki Tinker is saying in code what is impolite to say openly: "That Jewish guy doesn't represent us. Vote for an honest Christian instead."

And this is a Democrat speaking. Imagine what a Republican would say.

Take My Wife - Please!

John McCain has a sense of humor which can be charitably called odd. Whether it's singing a let's-bomb-Iran ditty to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," joking about killing Iranians with American cigarette exports, or his jest about a woman being raped by a gorilla, his attempts at humor tend to backfire messily.

And now we have another example.

McCain was in Sturgis, South Dakota yesterday, campaigning at the annual Buffalo Chip biker rally. Now, it is admittedly odd for a 71-year-old man to proclaim kinship with a bunch of big Harley riders, but stranger things have happened. In the midst of the flesh-pressing and speech-making, he made a rather interesting comment about his wife Cindy, who was standing right next to him: "I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."

A little explanation is needed here. Every year, one of the high (?) points at the Sturgis rally is an event which ESPN described far better than I can:

Buffalo Chip has a reputation for that sort of thing. It holds a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night, which is essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, "It's only this one week a year."

So was McCain really volunteering to put his wife on display? I would call it just another of his off-the-cuff attempts at cracking a joke, except the video clearly shows him reading from a prepared text.

If Barack Obama had offered Michelle up like this, the media would roast him for weeks on end - assuming, that is, he survives whatever Michelle would put him through. She's no dummy, and she sure looks tough as nails.

So McCain may have won the biker vote by showing up at Buffalo Chip, but he might have lost the women's vote with his rather crass comment. And there are a lot more women than bikers.

Obama the Anti-Christ?

John McCain - or rather, his handlers - clearly realize that he has nothing going for him. He has no new ideas or new solutions. His entire campaign is based on continuing the very same policies that have dragged the current president down to historically low opinion ratings and the country into an abyss. He has surrounded himself with Karl Rove acolytes who believe that the only way to win an election is to turn your opponent into a baby-eating, grandparent-murdering monster. And if your opponent is intelligent and charismatic with a lot of good ideas, that makes it all the more challenging.

Hence McCain's latest crop of ads and talking points. His surrogates' claims of "presumptuousness" on Barack Obama's part is really just a thinly-veiled way of calling him an uppity Negro who needs to be taught his place in the world. And his TV ad comparing Obama's "celebrity" status with that of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, known nowadays primarily for boozily forgetting to put on underwear, has been widely derided as appealing to racist fears of black men hooking up with white women.

But his latest web ad goes even further.



Now, at first glance, McCain is satirizing Obama's Great White (as it were) Hope image and taking it to absurd extremes. No big deal, and the Ten Commandments clip is pretty funny in this context. But there is something deeper here.

McCain can't hope to win in November without the support of the Christian Right voters who put every one of Tim LaHaye's ultra-violent Left Behind books at the top of the best-seller list. Now it just so happens that the series' principal villain is a man who comes to power by proclaiming peace and international brotherhood but ends up doing the work of Satan.

In other words, the ad is sneakily calling Barack Obama the Anti-Christ.

Classy.

But maybe that's giving McCain's team too much credit. After all, they thought the "McCain Cribs" web video, which patronized and looked down on the young voters whose support they want, was a good idea. So they might not have actually meant to call Obama the epitome of evil.

Nah, who are we kidding? Of course they meant it. They're trying to reach the people who insist that Obama is some sort of black supremacist secret Muslim, hoping to scare them into voting for a nice white Christian man instead of some black guy with the middle name of "Hussein."

But will they get away with it?

Something Greater Than Ourselves

Once in a while, something happens that makes us pause and turn away from such purely Earth-based subjects as politics and elections to make us appreciate the majesty of the Universe.

This morning, my kids and I watched a live feed of a total solar eclipse from halfway around the world. Even on a computer screen, watching the Moon slowly cover the Sun and the solar corona shine out in the darkened sky is an awesome experience.

The astronomy behind an eclipse is easy enough to understand - from Earth, the Sun and the Moon appear to be the same size. Every few years, everything lines up so perfectly that the Moon's shadow falls along a narrow path across Earth's surface. Anyone in that path sees the Moon blot out the Sun for a few glorious minutes.

But knowing the science behind an eclipse and actually seeing one, even remotely, are two very different things. Seeing the effect when the sky darkens and the Sun's coronal halo becomes visible is to know that there are greater things in the Universe than our ephemeral squabbles here on Earth.

The Dark Bush

With Batmania once again sweeping the nation thanks to The Dark Knight, I suppose it was inevitable that the movie's imagery would be used for political purposes. In today's Wall Street Journal, Andrew Klavan makes a rather odd comparison:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society - in which people sometimes make the wrong choices - and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

The Dark Knight, then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's 300, The Dark Knight is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

The chutzpah is breathtaking. Comparing President Bush to Batman? Let's take a moment to stop our heads from spinning and go down a quick list of reasons as to why this is nuttier than a can of cashews. Batman may be psychologically damaged and a bit weird at times, but he does not:

• Respond to the Joker's crimes by killing the Penguin.
• Kidnap the Riddler, whisk him to the Batcave, and torture him until he confesses to crimes he didn't commit.
• Tell Commissioner Gordon to stuff it while blowing up half of Gotham City and spying on the other half.
• Go on TV and tell the world that anyone who disagrees with him obviously loves the Joker and wants to see a large smoking crater where Gotham City used to be.

You get the idea. You can see political parallels in just about any movie, but this one is really a stretch, to put it mildly.

CBS' McCain Makeover

Many progressive bloggers have seen how the media tends to give John McCain a get-out-of-jail-free card on issues for which they endlessly hammer Barack Obama. For example, Jeremiah Wright's rants were replayed endlessly but John Hagee's rants were greeted with near total silence until they got too numerous to ignore.

But Katie Couric and CBS may just have hit bottom.

On last night's CBS Evening News broadcast, Couric asked McCain about Obama's claim that the so-called "Anbar Awakening" did more to quell Iraqi violence than the Surge™ did. McCain answered that, "Colonel [Sean] McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."

Actually, it isn't. McCain has it exactly backwards. McFarland began talking with the Sunni shieks in September 2006. President Bush announced the Surge™ four months later, in January 2007.

For someone whose entire campaign seems to be based on the supposed success of the Surge™, it's a pretty big mistake and makes one wonder just how up to the job he really is.

This is, of course, not the first time he has gotten something so basic so wrong - witness his repeated confusion of Shia vs. Sunni and his Monday claim that there's a lot more work to do on the "Iraq-Pakistan border."

Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border.

More disturbing than McCain's constant demonstrations of ignorance, however, is how CBS edited their interview last night to protect the candidate. When Couric asked McCain the above question, he responded with a confused ramble which didn't sound good at all. So what did CBS do? They took a different answer and pasted it after Couric's question, thus making it look as if McCain was being far more coherent than he actually was.

This is bad. Editing interviews for time is one thing, but cutting and pasting to make a candidate look better is way out of line.

Shocking

The Iraq War will almost certainly go down in history as America's first privatized war. Jobs once done by the military themselves, from housing and food service to vehicle maintenance and security for ranking officers, were instead contracted out to private corporations. And all too often, we have seen how the Pentagon put even egregious profiteering ahead of the safety of their own troops.

KBR, once a subsidiary of Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton, was given the job of building and maintaining tens of thousands of structures for American soldiers serving in Iraq. The New York Times is today reporting that the electrical work in KBR-built facilities was so shoddy that during a six-month period from August 2006 through January 2007 almost three hundred electrical fires took place. Even worse, more than a dozen soldiers have been electrocuted and many others have been injured.

It now appears that both KBR and the Pentagon knew more than a year ago that the wiring work - frequently subcontracted to Iraqi companies with reputations for cheap labor and a rather lax attitude towards quality control - was substandard and dangerous. At one building complex in Baghdad, soldiers got electrical shocks on an almost daily basis. KBR electricians say they continually complained to company and Pentagon management that the wiring was a disaster waiting to happen, but their reports were ignored.

And even worse, the Pentagon did nothing even after Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth was electrocuted in January while taking a shower. They started paying attention only when his family sued KBR to get answers and Congress got involved.

Even today, problems continue - just last month, an electrical fire in Fallujah gutted ten Marine barracks buildings. The displaced soldiers were forced to write home and ask for donations to replace their destroyed personal belongings.

It is a national disgrace that our soldiers, who have already given so much, are forced to fear for their lives - not from a military enemy, but from war profiteers allegedly on their own side. It's even more of a disgrace that Pentagon brass are so wedded to the commercial side of the military-industrial complex that they barely lift a finger to protect their own people.

This cannot be allowed to happen again. The use of private contractors in war-fighting must be reined in.

Comic Relief

Brent Rinehart is a county commissioner running for re-election in Oklahoma City. It appears that his campaign is not the smooth road he evidently thought it would be, for he is mailing out a flyer in the form of a crudely-drawn comic book. And not just any comic book, either.

No, this comic book paints Rinehart as the defender of all things good and depicts him taking on the "liberal good ol' boys" who supposedly run the county government. No big deal there. But then it goes in several very odd directions:

• An angel is seen supporting Rinehart while a devil backs his opponents.
• Rinehart (or his cartoon counterpart) attacks "pedaphiles [sic], polygamists and homosexuals who practice anal sodomy" - which must be the first time such a phrase has appeared in a campaign flyer.
• The flyer blames "the homosexuals [depicted as stereotypical toga-wearing swishy hedonists], the good ol' boy politicians [drawn as shady types in trenchcoats], and liberals to name some" for opposing him.

In a nutshell, it's quite a piece of work which truly must be seen to be believed. One would think a county commissioner would have more important business than bashing gays, but apparently not this guy.

Will he win the election? Or will the forces of evil prevail? Tune in next time!

Know-Nothing Party, 2008 Edition

Back in the 1850s, there was a nativist political movement called the American Party which existed basically to express hostility to immigrants of all types. Party members were reportedly so secretive that when they were asked about party tenets or beliefs, they were supposed to answer, "I know nothing." The party thus became known as the Know-Nothings, an appellation that is still with us today.

Last week, Barack Obama talked about how our schools need to put more emphasis on teaching foreign languages, saying that language skills are more important than ever in an increasingly globalized economy. More language skills = better jobs = more money.

Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Well, our generation's Know-Nothings responded with the vitriol and rage fully expected of ignorant people who know they're going to get creamed in November. Many accused Obama of wanting to force children to speak Spanish. The Weekly Standard called his remarks "snobbery," a line echoed by many in the conservative media who called it just one more example of how he looks down on "real Americans."

Meanwhile, the National Review indulged in some snobbery of its own, claiming that most people are too dumb to learn foreign languages or even anything beyond the three Rs. And in a neat logical backflip, they turned it into another attack on Obama for having the audacity to believe otherwise.

For their part, Fox News brought on Joey Vento, a nativist hero for putting a "This Is America: When Ordering Please Speak English" sign in his restaurant window. Calling Obama "a sick man...a scary man," Vento ranted on how Americans should shun immigrants who do not learn English. (Of course, Obama wasn't talking about immigrants of any kind, but that has never stopped Fox News from attacking him.)

Republicans are already known as the party of deliberate ignorance for their support of creationism, abstinence-only sex education and a general disdain for anything which doesn't fit their ideology. This latest tantrum does nothing to change that.

Strangers in the Land of Egypt

In the Jewish Bible, we are told not once but several times to treat other people well "because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt." It is a central theme of the Passover Seder.

Some Jews apparently need reminding of that simple fact.

Agriprocessors, set among the cornfields of Postville, Iowa, is the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and has long been a source of friction between its ultra-Orthodox owners and the surrounding mostly-Protestant community. (The book Postville is a fascinating look at the dichotomy between the two cultures.) It was bad enough when the company was recently raided as part of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, but more is coming out.

According to an affidavit, abuse of undocumented workers at Agriprocessors runs rampant, including:

• Workers from Guatemala and Mexico were paid far below minimum wage.
• A supervisor who sold used cars on the side threatened to fire employees who didn't buy one.
• An employee's eyes were duct-taped shut by a supervisor who then hit him with a meat hook. The employee refused to report the incident out of fear of being fired.
• Female employees were routinely pressured for sex in exchange for promotions.
• Employees were required to pay the company for use of protective equipment.
  

And on and on. There is a Yiddish expression, shande far de goyim, roughly translated as "a disgrace to the Jews," which seems to fit Agriprocessors' owners perfectly. It's a safe bet that the owners, who are known for keeping a tight watch on company operations, knew these things were happening and did nothing to stop them.

The image of the greedy, money-obsessed Jew is a stereotype that won't die, and every time Jewish business owners get caught doing something despicable like this, it just perpetuates it.

Undocumented immigrants are among the most vulnerable members of American society. At every turn, they are demeaned, victimized and blamed for everything that goes wrong. One would think that Orthodox Jews of all people would pay special attention to the Biblical injunction against oppressing other people.

But it just goes to show that Jews are just like everyone else. Some are good people, some are bad.

And some, it seems, bring disgrace to all Jews by their actions.

Whine and Cheese

Being a father with two young children, I am well acquainted with the Nickelodeon cartoon The Fairly Oddparents, in which a boy with fairy godparents wishes for all sorts of weird things. When the wishes backfire and turn disastrous, he simply wishes them away and everything returns to normal.

The Nickelodeon writers seem to be handling John McCain's economic policy. The candidate has repeatedly claimed that America's financial problems are all "psychological" and that we can just wish them away. And on Wednesday, McCain adviser Phil Gramm told the Washington Times that all this "recession" business is in our minds.

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said. "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

Buck up, act like a man, and everything will be fine, he says.

Well.

Is it "whining" when we agonize about how to make the mortgage payment? Is it "complaining" when we stay awake at night having to choose between putting food on the table and getting medicine for our kids? And is it "mental" when we worry about how to afford the gas to get to work?

I think not.

Gramm's comments - and McCain's initial support until a public outcry made him back off - betray what he really feels about the rest of us. He and his ilk literally seem to have no clue what is happening beyond their limos and gated communities. Protected by their millions of dollars, they have sealed themselves off from the rest of us, secure that they never have to face the economic squeezes that the rest of us deal with every day.

As long as the fat cats are sitting pretty, the rest of the world can go to hell.

And that is Republican economic policy in a nutshell.

The More Things Change...

It's not enough that John McCain is running on a platform of continuing all of President Bush's disastrous policies - he has to imitate the Decider's worst practices as well.

On Monday, McCain was speaking in Denver at a public venue, a town-hall event described as "open to the public." Carol Kreck, a 61-year-old librarian, took that description seriously and so in the best American tradition of vigorous debate showed up with a homemade protest sign saying simply "MCCAIN=BUSH."

And got arrested for it.

Yes, she got a trespassing ticket at a public event held on public property. Something tells me that if she had held up a sign saying "I (heart) McCain" or "McCain 2008," she would have been left alone. Instead, the Secret Service and the Denver police swept in and removed this purveyor of sedition before she could pollute the minds of right-thinking Americans.

Is McCain's ego really go fragile that he has to be protected from anyone who might disagree with him? Or are his handlers afraid that he might have a flashback to his POW days in Vietnam and go on a rampage?

Or perhaps the McCain campaign wants to continue the Bush Administration's practice of keeping the president in a bubble, surrounded by sycophantic yes-men and free of any troublesome dissent or disagreement.

And we see what that has gotten us.

Informers Among Us

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration set up Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) which was little more than a civilian corps of informers. Anyone whose job takes him or her into someone's home - mail carriers, plumbers, home nurses, etc - was given the job of looking for anything "suspicious" and report it. Millions of perfectly law-abiding citizens could have been turned in for having the "wrong" books on their shelves or the "wrong" pictures on the wall. After it was leaked to the media, an uproar ensued and the program was shut down.

Until now.

The Denver Post is reporting that the White House is up to its old tricks, only under a different name. "Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers," the newspaper says, "have been trained and recently dispatched as 'Terrorism Liaison Officers' in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for 'suspicious activity' - and are reporting their findings into secret government databases."

Of course, "suspicious activity" is defined so vaguely as to encompass practically everything. The TLO's training materials advise informers to watch out for anyone "taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code." This would ensnare realtors, surveyors, journalists, shutterbugs, public speakers, and a whole host of other entirely innocent people.

Joseph Stalin would be proud of the national security state we are constructing. When everyone spies on everyone else, and when people are afraid to speak out, we have become the sort of repressive society Osama bin Laden would love.

An Odd Definition of Slavery

Jonah Goldberg, who once said it's a peachy idea to bring back literacy tests to let only "properly" educated Americans vote, is at it again. In his Los Angeles Times op-ed column this morning, he actually claimed that Barack Obama's proposal of national service is akin to slavery:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.

Is he kidding? Does he really not know (or care) that many schools already require some form of community service as a graduation requirement, or that the No Child Left Behind act similarly threatens to withhold federal funding from schools?

Or does it count as "slavery" only when a black Democrat suggests it?

For that matter, students are required to do all sorts of things like, um, show up for class and, er, take exams. Does that mean all students are slaves, or that all children who are told to clean up their rooms and take out the garbage are slaves?

And while many children (or those who are just childish) may scream "slavery!" at being told to do anything at all, grownups know better. Goldberg really should as well.

Perhaps he should have paid more attention in school.

Desperately Seeking Distractions

John McCain is a campaign manager's nightmare, spouting endless bloopers and gaffes which make one wonder if Arizonans keep electing this guy because the sun has fried their brains. For example, he insisted yesterday that he still would have voted for invading Iraq even knowing what we have learned over the last five years - no WMDs, no 9/11 connection, no Al Qaeda connection, massive quagmire, etc.

With McCain demonstrating every time he opens his mouth why he shouldn't be president, his handlers needed a distraction badly. And they got one.

Sunday morning on CBS' Face the Nation, retired general Wesley Clark said quite reasonably that McCain's military service and time as a POW during the Vietnam War do not by themselves qualify him to be president, no matter how often he says it. The candidate's surrogates got down on their knees, thanked Jesus for the deus ex televisia, and got out the long knives, howling that Clark somehow "insulted" or "denigrated" McCain's service.

This is, of course, a total lie. Clark didn't say anything even approaching that, only how McCain can't get away with relentlessly flogging his military service as reason #1 why he should be elected. "I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war," he said on Sunday. "He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world."

When host Bob Schieffer mentioned that Barack Obama had never served in the military, Clark came back with "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President."

Simple and straightforward, and so naturally the GOP pounced on it via Fox News and other propaganda outlets. Obama cringed and criticized Clark's comments, dismaying supporters who were looking forward to a candidate who fights back against manufactured Republican outrage rather than caving in. Naturally, that was not enough for the GOP jihadists, who demanded that Clark be jettisoned from the campaign altogether.

Obama should fight this, and fight it hard. If he gives in now, he will give the GOP carte blanche to go after him on every ridiculous distraction between now and Election Day. The Republicans know they're in deep trouble, so that gives them every incentive to fight dirty. Obama should not surrender to their darkest instincts.

The Pitfalls of Auto-Replace

The American Family Association, not known for its tolerance of non-heterosexual folks, loathes the word "gay" so much they routinely rewrite AP wire stories for its OneNewsNow website. Since they use the word "homosexual" as a they-are-different-from-us-so-we-must-hate-and-fear-them tactic, they automatically replace the word "gay" in AP stories with the word "homosexual."

Putting aside such questions as whether they can legally do that, such a practice occasionally causes problems. Hilarious problems, but problems nonetheless. You see, an American runner named Tyson Gay ran in an Olympic trial race yesterday, and the AFA's software dutifully changed the story text:

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

The story quickly spread and caused much mirth until someone at the AFA changed the text back - but a screen capture exists for posterity.

Auto-replace can be a powerful tool, but it sometimes backfires. Like now.

I Didn't Know Caves Had Cable Service

"I can't talk to you, Al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN."

David Addington, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, trying to weasel out of discussing the White House's torture policy while testifying before a House panel

Pimp My Bus

Whatever political persuasion we may be, Democratic or Republican, liberal or conservative, I think we can all agree that few things are more pathetic than someone desperately trying to be something he or she is clearly not. Exhibit A is the new "McCain Cribs" video on YouTube, which was added last week:



As far as I can make out, this is real, like some sort of nerdy-white-guy parody of Pimp My Ride - except they're serious.

After the disasters of John McCain's "green jello" speech last month and his embarassingly obvious attempts to kiss up to the 23% of Americans who somehow still believe President Bush is doing a good job, the campaign needs a boost. With this video, they are clearly trying to reach out to the MTV generation of voters, the ones who are "hip" and "cool" and use words like "fo'shizzle" in casual conversation. But it's painfully obvious that the McCain team doesn't know the first thing about communicating with their target audience.

Give it up, guys. You're never going to get the youth vote, and every time you try something like this, you make it ever more obvious just why you're not going to get it.

Noun, Verb, 9/11 Redux

Back during the Republican primaries, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani had a well-known habit of peppering virtually everything he said with some sort of reference to the 9/11 attacks. It got so ludicrous that Senator Joe Biden quipped that "there's only three things [Giuliani] mentions in a sentence - a noun, a verb, and 9/11."

Well, it now seems that John McCain is giving Rudy a run for his money in that department. When not promising endless war in Iraq or continually throwing previously held positions out the window in pursuit of votes, the presumptive GOP nominee has jumped on the all-terrorism-all-the-time bandwagon.

Fortune asked him a pretty straightforward question: "What do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?" McCain could have talked about skyrocketing energy or health care costs, or the rising inequality of our new Gilded Age, or the soaring national debt. Nope, he had something else in mind - eventually, as Fortune explains:

He's looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11. Finally he says, "Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences."

It's like McCain is determined to bring every caricature of a fearmongering Republican to life. Lately, it seems that his answer to every question somehow involves "Islamic extremism" or the War on Terror™. Doesn't matter what the subject is - it could be energy costs, college tuition or the duck-billed platypus, he will find a way to work in a "be afraid, be very afraid" angle.

And he wonders why no one is taking him seriously.

Oil's Well That Ends Well

Back in 2002, when President Bush and his cronies rolled out their sales pitch for an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, dissidents and protesters said all this stuff about WMDs was just a smokescreen and that it was all about oil. American companies wanted access to Iraq's vast oil resources, and they had a steady friend in the White House. Indeed, Vice President Cheney's secretive "energy task force" specifically concerned itself with the Iraqi oil fields.

Well, five years after the American invasion, it appears that they've given up all pretense and are heading for the trough. The New York Times reported last week that four big oil companies - ExxonMobil, BP, Total and Shell - are getting no-bid contracts to service and run Iraq's oil industry. Companies from all other countries, including Russia, India and China, weren't even allowed to try and compete.

Not coincidentally, the companies were all partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, the foreign consortium which originally exploited Iraq's oil fields until Saddam Hussein nationalized the industry in 1972. So they are now being allowed back in.

Does anyone really believe the Iraqi people will get any more than a pittance for their oil? It is theirs, after all, and they should share in the benefits. But it seems increasingly likely that most oil profits will be taken out of the country, with a majority of the rest reserved for bribing Iraqi government officials.

Yes, after all the WMD lies, we now have proof that it really was all about the oil.

He's Baaaack...

When former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani entered the presidential race last year, he was immediately hailed as the Hero of 9/11 who would lead the GOP to victory. But that was before people actually got a look at the man behind the mask - at the cronyism, the authoritarianism, the petty vengeance and the multiple messy divorces, not to mention his complete inability to form a sentence without throwing in a 9/11 reference or three. With voters turning away in droves, his campaign performed a swan dive of biblical proportions, spending some $50 million without picking up a single delegate.

So he has naturally been tapped to shill for John McCain on national-security issues.

The irony is just too delicious. Giuliani's claim of anything at all to do with national security is based only on the many photos of him striding manfully through the ashes on 9/11. After the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, he located the city's emergency command center at 7 WTC, ignoring all his advisers who urged him to put it someplace less of a target.

This morning, Giuliani bashed Barack Obama in a media conference call, saying the presumptive Democratic nominee's emphasis on going after accused terrorists with laws (as we did after the 1993 WTC attack) rather than bombs is somehow weak. "For Senator Obama to suggest '93 is the best example of how to deal with this is a good example of him wanting to go on defense," he said.

The Obama campaign wasted no time striking back, unearthing a quote supporting the candidate's position. Back in 1994, when the plotters of the first Trade Center attack were convicted and sent to prison, someone said that the verdict "demonstrates that New Yorkers won't meet violence with violence, but with a far greater weapon - the law."

The person who said that? None other than Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Ouch. And so every time Giuliani opens his mouth in McCain's service, people will remember just why he crashed and burned in the Republican primaries. Hopefully, they will also wonder how good a candidate McCain can possibly be if this is the guy who fronts for him.

Using Veterans as Lab Rats

We have seen far, far too many times how the Bush Administration uses "support the troops" as a mantra to ward off any criticism, then gives those same troops the shaft when no one's looking. From denying them sufficient armor in Iraq to using a pet facility for cremating soldiers' bodies to housing soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder next to a firing range, they keep finding new and increasingly terrible ways to insult and belittle the men and women who have given so much.

And they have done it again.

ABC News is reporting that the Veterans Administration enlisted returning soldiers in a clinical trial of Chantix, a new anti-smoking drug made by Pfizer. No problem with that. The problem is that the drug has been linked to such psychological problems as depression and suicide - and that the VA didn't tell the soldiers about it.

In fact, they probably would never have admitted it if not for James Elliot, an Army sniper who returned from Iraq with PTSD and signed up for the study. After several months on the drug, he snapped, left his home with a loaded gun and threatened to kill the police officers who confronted him.

Fortunately, Elliot survived - but the VA sees no reason to stop the trials. Doesn't matter that the FAA has barred pilots from taking the drug, nor that the VA warned the subjects (only after Elliot's breakdown, of course) that the drug was linked to "anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide" - onward!

"Lab rat, guinea pig, disposable hero," an understandably bitter Elliot described himself.

Supporting the troops, once again.

When the President Does It

Back in 1977, when David Frost interviewed Richard Nixon on a variety of subjects, the disgraced former chief executive made the surprising claim that when "when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

"By definition?" Frost asked.

"Exactly," Nixon replied.

In the twilight of his failed presidency, President Bush seems to be channeling Nixon's ghost. Bush was remarkably defensive in an interview with Britain's Sky News network, perhaps because he finally realizes he has some things to be defensive about.

When interviewer Adam Boulton asked where Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib fit into Bush's much-touted "freedom agenda," the president accused him of "slander[ing] America." When Boulton mentioned how high fuel prices are hurting people economically, Bush scoffed that "you've got a bunch of people squawking about the price of gasoline."

But Bush saved the best for last. Last week, the Supreme Court overturned the part of the Military Commissions Act that denied habeas corpus rights to "war on terror" prisoners locked up in Guantanamo Bay. Many of them have been there for six years or more with no charges and no trial, something that usually happens only under a dictatorship. When Boulton asked Bush about it, the president responded with something truly extraordinary:

This was a law passed, Adam. We passed a law. Bypassing the Constitution means that we did something outside the bounds of the Constitution. We went to the Congress and got a piece of legislation passed.

Yes, after seven and a half years in office, George W. Bush is still woefully ignorant about some basic legal facts. Like how just because Congress passes a bill and the president signs it into law doesn't automatically mean it passes Constitutional muster. Like how federal courts can (and do) declare laws invalid if they fall afoul of the Constitution.

On the other hand, at least Bush didn't say something like, "This is what I wanted and the courts have no business disagreeing with me." I guess you could call that an improvement.

Change You Can't Believe In

One of the more obnoxious tenets of President Bush's M.O. has been to allow only die-hard supporters access to campaign events and even public speeches, keeping anyone who might be so churlish as to actually disagree with him as far away as possible. Not only was Bush thus kept blissfully ignorant in his bubble, but TV audiences were tricked into believing the vast majority of Americans wholeheartedly agree with Our Great Leader and that only some sort of hippie jihadist crank could possibly think otherwise. This has only deepened as Bush's poll numbers continue to plunge.

Given how John McCain has previously bragged of how he marches in lockstep with Bush, it's not surprising that he's emulating the Decider in other ways as well.

Last night, the McCain campaign held a supposedly bipartisan "town hall" meeting in New York which was carried exclusively on Fox News. Viewers may have noted the rather stark absence of blacks, Hispanics and other non-whites in what is arguably the most diverse city in the world.

Well, there's a reason for that. At the very end, Fox told its viewers that the event wasn't bipartisan at all - rather, that the McCain campaign had distributed tickets to its own supporters, along with GOP New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and supposedly independent groups. In other words, McCain once again emulated Bush: he packed the event with his own people and made it look as if he enjoyed wide support.

Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean was not amused: "Copying the Bush campaign model of stacking events with his prescreened supporters is not the transparency Americans are looking for. If that is Senator McCain's idea of straight talk, the American people are in for a long and disappointing campaign season."

McCain likes to talk about how he's an agent of change, but so far it looks like he's not changing a darn thing.

Understatement of the Year

"A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment."

Fox Senior Vice President of Programming Bill Shine, apologizing for a caption saying "Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama's Baby Mama!"

A Victory for the Rule of Law

President Bush's "war on terror" prisoners cannot be locked away indefinitely and barred from ever going to American courts to appeal their confinement. That's the short version of today's Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in the case of Boumediene v. Bush.

The Court said, in no uncertain terms, that the president and Congress do not have the power to deny habeas corpus rights to prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere. The Constitution clearly says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it," and the Court found that the current situation just doesn't rise to that level.

"The real risks, the real threats, of terrorist attacks are constant and not likely soon to abate," Anthony Kennedy said. "The ways to disrupt our life and laws are so many and unforeseen that the Court should not attempt even some general catalogue of crises that might occur. Certain principles are apparent, however. Practical considerations and exigent circumstances inform the definition and reach of the law's writs, including habeas corpus. The cases and our tradition reflect this precept."

The majority was careful to note that the opinion does not mean that prisoners can immediately demand a habeas hearing. Rather, Kennedy said quite reasonably that the Executive Branch has some leeway - just not six years of it: "Our holding with regard to exhaustion should not be read to imply that a habeas court should intervene the moment an enemy combatant steps foot in a territory where the writ runs. The Executive is entitled to a reasonable period of time to determine a detainee's status before a court entertains that detainee's habeas corpus petition."

Of course, not all of the justices agreed. Antonin Scalia penned a particularly hysterical dissent in which he supported taking our hard-won freedoms and tossing them in the trash in the name of security. "America is at war with radical Islamists," he cried, reeling off a list of terror attacks in the US and abroad culminating in 9/11. And just to be sure the message got across, he warned that the Court's decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

"The Nation," he warned darkly, "will live to regret what the Court has done today."

This is standard operating procedure: warn that any hint of dissent, any rejection of infinite presidential power, will result in American deaths. But those scare tactics don't work anymore, as polling consistently shows that people don't believe a word of it.

The rule of law has survived the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Civil War, red scares and Richard Nixon. It will survive radical Islamic terror as well. What the Supreme Court said in plain English is that it also needs to survive President Bush's "trust me or the terrorists win" approach to fighting terror.

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Kennedy wrote. "Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law."

Well put.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 4

Impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney has been a hot topic for many Americans ever since it was made crystal clear just how badly they twisted the workings of government to embroil us in the Iraq War. Once the Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006, we thought we could finally get to the bottom of the many outrages coming out of the White House and get rid of this crowd once and for all. The Democratic leadership, however, has shown no interest at all; even before the midterm elections, future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CBS' 60 Minutes that impeachment was "off the table" no matter what.

But that doesn't mean individual Democrats aren't trying. Last night, Rep. Dennis Kucinich defied the leadership and took to the House floor to introduce his 35-count resolution to impeach Bush. Speaking for almost five hours on C-SPAN, he listed a wide variety of offenses, including but by no means limited to:

• Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq
• Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression
• Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War
• Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
• Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources
• Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
• Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment
• Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
• Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001

And so on, a torrent of criminality from exploiting the 9/11 attacks to botching the response to Hurricane Katrina to defying Congressional subpoenas to much more.

On the one hand, impeachment will obviously go nowhere without the support of the House leadership. With only seven months to go until a new president takes office, Pelosi has successfully stalled to the point where impeachment is simply impractical. The media barely noticed Kucinich's move, consigning it to tiny wire-service articles buried deep within newspapers - and so far, it hasn't been on TV at all.

So what happens now? Only time will tell.