Tuesday, July 22, 2008

OBAMA’S NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERIENCE IS ENHANCED BY HIS INTELLIGENCE AND THE EXTRAORDINARYLY HIGH LEVEL OF HIS JUDGMENT   HE MAY BE BRIGHTEST MAN TO RUN FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT SINCE THOMAS JEFFERSON   Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Parle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Dick Cheney are just a few of Defense Department legions of those with resumes overflowing with experience on matters related to national defense and homeland security. They are also a list of leaders on National Security who made one of the biggest mistakes in matters of national defense in history. All the experience in the world could not save these men from making fools of themselves and our nation. These men with more experience in national security than any group in modern history in matters of state and defense came up with the idea for a preemptive invasion of Iraq. After six years it is only a handful of people blinded by their loyalty to the Republican Party who continue to believe that the invasion was not the biggest error ever made in international relations by this youthful nation. The preemptive invasion of Iraq is the largest black mark on our entire history and indelibly marked by the know-how of men with more military experience than we have seen in any leadership assemblage of any administrations in recent history including John McCain. And every last one of these “brilliant military minds” was dead wrong; making mistakes from which we may be unable to flee for decades. Let me suggest that those of you who continue to belabor the inexperience and lack of judgment of Barack Obama on matter of international affairs stop looking at the world through your belly button. Barack Obama has astute judgment and broad-based of experience that all of the neo-conservatives that led the way to Baghdad from Kabul could not match when all of the resumes were put together. And John McCain’s portfolio of experience and judgment is one six-pack short of a case. Retired generals have made the very astute observations that McCain’s six years in a Viet Nam concentration camp did not give him more insight into questions of international relations than living six years in a dark hole. McCain came from a family where his grandfather and father were naval admirals. He received an appointment to Annapolis where more of the military mind set was pounded into his head. His mind has been tutored to think in the narrow lane of a six lane highway. In his criticism of Obama, McCain continues to say that when he is commander-in-chief, he will depend on the commanders in the field to tell him when our troops should be redeployed. We need a president who will seek the advice and counsel of the generals in the field, but whom as president will decide when our troops should come home because as president, he is the commander-in-chief. Obama did just that today in Iraq. He made it clear that while he will seek the advice and counsel of the top military minds, in the end the people have elected Obama to be in charge and it a job he will gladly undertake After his prisoner of war experience and the rehabilitation from the numerous injuries received from his captors, McCain’s flight status was reinstated and he became the commander of a flight squadron in Florida. Except for that brief tenure as commander he has had no administrative responsibility. I would be interested how he merits such loud praise for his national security and defense experience which as far as my research can detect was limited to flying A-4 Sky hawks off the S. S. Forrestal. On July 20, 2008 the president of Iraq, al Maliki tells a German magazine that he agrees with Obama’s long term policy. The U. S. should bring the boys and girls home again in 16 months. In other words, the president of Iraq, al Maliki, agrees with Barack Obama. Many of you will recall that Bush said bluntly at one his unmemorable news conferences, that when the Iraqi government asked us to leave, we should leave.  They have! We should. McCain has also criticized Obama for refusing to say publicly that the “surge” has been successful which the Senator from Arizona has been saying for some time. The purpose of the surge was to give the political leaders sufficient time to agree on the political issues that must be resolved before Iraq can have a viable government. If the surge has been successful, the Arizona Senator should be pushing for the American troops to come home. The surge was successful or it was a failure—McCain must make up his mind. He cannot have it both ways. If the surge was as successful as McCain insists, the troops should be on their way home at this very moment. If it was not successful, the troops should remain until the victory that McCain  persists on and which has nearly no chance of ever coming to fruition, has finally been reached in the minds of  McCain and his fellow-hawks. And if the surge was successful, the generals on the ground should be calling upon the president to bring the soldiers back to America. Their certainty of the surge’s success is obvious by their utter silence. In fact, the average Sunni on the street does not want Americans to go home, not now, not ever. I have been arguing ever since the surge began that it is Moqtada al Sadr who has won the surge.  He ordered his troops home when Bush announced the surge of 30,000 troops. Al Sadr ordered his troops to return to their homes and their hideouts until the Americans, victims of their own foolish pride and patriotic misperception, departed the Iraqi shores. With the deep reduction in American deaths, and the genocidal slaughter of Iraqi civilians both the American political leaders and the equally blinded patriotic military leaders such as John MCain with artificial egos bigger than their limited I. Q. s made the irrational conclusion that the surge had worked and that the American presence of a mere 30,000 additional troops had squelched the insurgents and the radical militia. It appeared so obvious to me that our attempt to eradicate a hatred that has caused the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to fight each other for 1400 years had no chance to work; that no 90 day surge which was turned into a three hundred and sixty-five day surge, that no army of 150,000 troops plus 150,000 contractors which the Bush Administration has interjected into the war by tiptoeing around the Congress, will never—let me say it again, will never turn this nation that has survived for thirty-five years under the ruthless dictatorship of the minority Sunnis dominance and its harsh leader--Saddam Hussein will suddenly become one nation under Allah. The country’s population is composed of  60% Shiite, 20% Sunni, and 20%  Kurdish Sunni, etc. 1.8 million Iraqi have been displaced to nearby countries, 1.6 million have been displaced in Iraq itself. It does not take a PhD in math to determine that any democratic election will result in the control of Iraq by the Shiites who have very strong ties to Iran. Nor does it take a PhD to realize that the Sunnis are in serious danger whenever the coalition forces retire from the country. Since the Parliament which has been arbitrarily divided by the American occupiers can not reach an agreement on a long term, permanent, distribution of power and oil revenues the options are simple—either the coalition forces remain there for the indefinite future or we simply pull out our forces and financial support and let the country work out its future on its own whatever that means. The Sunnis do not want the U. S. to leave. They will readily tell you that outside of Baghdad the surge is a joke. The insurgents continue to fight the militia; the Kurds and the Shiites continue to fight over the rights to the oil reserves located in an area dominated by the Kurds, Iran continues to penetrate Iraq and lend its armies and its money to their brother Shiites and Parliament cannot decide how the power can be divided equitably.  As one Sunni on the streets told Liz Sly, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, “This is the calm before the storm. Don’t ever think Al Qaeda and the (Shiite) militias have gone. They are still there and they are waiting for a chance to attack again.” Another civilian told the reporter, “The Iraqi army is doing a good job…but only because they are being supervised by Americans. I’m afraid that if the Americans leave, the Iraqi army will split and each one will fight on behalf of his own sect.”  In this statement we see why the surge did not work. The purpose of the surge was not to stop the violence that made every street in this ancient city a potential nightmare; it was to provide enough civility on streets throughout the city for all parties to this war a chance to establish a viable government. What this man is attempting to say is that the only thing that is keeping the relative calm and peace glued together is the American forces, and that the moment those forces depart, the sectarian warfare between the three camps will resume. America has spent approximately $1 trillion on this ill-advised invasion. Every month that we stay there we spend billions that could and should be invested in the infrastructure of our country, in our schools, in our inner-cities, in our roads, bridges eighty-five percent (85%) of which are in danger of collapse, in our Social Security System, in Medicare and Medicaid; not to mention paying off of the debt that the Bush tax cut for the rich and paying off the debt emanating from the massive cost and waste from the war in Iraq. There is a multitude of additional debt related to the needs vital to rebuilding a country that the Bush administration has allowed to fall into disrepair. We simply cannot afford to continue this dreadful error in judgment at the expense of our own people. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Kristol, and all of the other neo-conservative whose warped view of the world persuaded Bush and his military leadership to oust Saddam Hussein should be made to pay for their incompetency. John McCain wants the U. S. to remain in Iraq until the United States wins. This nation cannot afford to continue this expense and the American people who by the standards of our constitution are the source of power in this democratic country by a number in excess of eighty (80%) percent want our troops brought home now.  If this is an example of McCain’s vast experience and superior judgment, he fails the grade. Another reason he disqualifies himself for the presidency is his total disregard for his disregard of the urgent domestic needs of our nation and his willingness to put our people even more deeply indebt with his unwavering support of the tax breaks for the rich at the expense of poor. Barack Obama wants to establish a time table of 16 months after he takes the oath of office and begin to pull our troops out—some to Afghanistan to complete the unfinished job of destroying the al Qaeda that flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York killing nearly three thousand Americans. They are headquartered in the mountainous region of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border hiding in caves and small camps along with their founder and leader Osama bin Laden. They must be destroyed. Unfortunately, the incompetent Mr. Bush and his neo-conservative supporters mistakenly redeployed our combat troops and our military equipment to preemptively invade Iraq which had nothing to do with the 9/11 devastation and gave the al Qaeda the opening they needed to reorganize themselves, re-staff their motley combat forces and lead the fight to bring the Taliban back into power in Kabul. They have not succeeded, but they are making dangerously rapid progress toward that end. The U. S. must deploy 10-20,000 more troops there to wipe out their camps, destroy their training facilities and either capture or kill their comrades in arms. McCain’s insistence on victory in a war that should not have been waged and cannot be won disqualifies him both as an expert in national defense and terrorism. Barack Obama, as he meets with world leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England is proving himself to be the man this nation needs at this time in our history. His informed confidence and his brilliant mind that is capable of extraordinary judgment must be sitting in the oval office leading this nation into a new and exciting future.   11:22:10 PM    comment []

Thursday, July 17, 2008

THE NEW YORKER COVER GOES BEYOND SATIRE IN A COUNTRY THAT IS SO DESPERATELY UNDEREDUCATED 80% OF THE PEOPLE PROBABLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE WORD “SATIRE” MEANS.   DAVID REMNICK MAY NOT UNDERSTAND THE WORD “SATIRE” AS  FULLY AS HE THINKS!   When first I viewed the controversial cover of The New Yorker magazine, I was perplexed. The first question I ask myself was is the cartoonist attempting to expose, denounce or deride Barack Obama. My second thought was what a wonderful gift to the barbaric right wing of the Republican Party who will have this is the hands of every potential voter in magazine, newspaper, television and cable ads from now until the election. My third thought was, “Why would one of the most liberal publications in the country want to put fodder on the already burning fires of Obama’s most ardent enemies?” Why would the New Yorker want to provide “aid and comfort” to the enemy in the midst of the most important election of the century? The absurdity of Barack Obama in a Muslim garment is a truly humorous image only to those who do not know better. According to a recent poll by USA Today, 10 percent of the American people believe that Obama is a Muslim and some of that 10 percent believe he is cahoots with al Qaeda or some other Jihadist group prepared to take over the U. S.  The cartoon did nothing to refute that lie. Michelle Obama, dressed in Arab garb, with an AK 47 slung over her shoulder while exaggerating to the absurd every thing for which the prudes in our society have criticized her, simply added flourishes to the image that Barack’s caricature portrays. Obama has been flogged by the barbaric right wingers for not wearing a flag on his lapel, for not placing his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance and the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” they have yet to accuse him of burning the flag. While I was upset that one of “ours” would run such a cover in the midst of an all ready overheated presidential campaign, it was the burning flag that went beyond the bounds of civility. Never add fuel to the fires the enemies have started. The New Yorker’s cover did just that. Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines satire thusly: “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing or deriding vice, folly, etc.” Within the confines of Webster’s definition of satire, the cover missed the target and did more damage to Obama’s aura to those he is having extreme difficulty in reaching than the editor ever intended. I personally feel it was irresponsible journalism for a publication whose readers believes it is “pro-Obama”.  More importantly, it is not the subscribers to The New Yorker he is laboring to win over between now and the November election. Most of them are already in his corner. It is the poor, uneducated, the unemployed many of  whom are viciously circulating the rumors about his patriotism. It is the underclass that is manufacturing the outlandish lies about his religion and dispersing  them in the mails (because their target audience does not own a computer nor have the knowledge to use one), And it is these same people who are the source of the rumor mills and the innuendos they are inventing about Michelle Obama’s character. About this I am certain, where Obama is fighting for his life is with the undereducated, the financially impoverished, and the culturally deprived. They are the people the media has determined he will never reach, who will vote against their own best-interest if the only option open to them is voting for a man of a different race, religion or ethnic background. I would hope that the next time the NewYorker attempts to apply a little of its brand of satire on the “enemies” of Obama in the good name of “equal time” and in a rare application of the “fairness doctrine” management may want to think about who, in these days of the 24-hour news cycles, you will be reaching and who will be made aware of your magazine probably for the first time on the mainstream, network news programs. It will not be playing to its normal specific target audience that shares its values, experience, education or familiarity with the New York lifestyle. 12:19:47 PM    comment []

Monday, July 14, 2008

OBAMA HAS THE SAME RIGHT WOMEN HAVE BEEN CLAIMING FOR THESELVES FOR CENTURIES—THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS.   IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS OBAMA HAS REFINED HIS POSITIONS ON A FEW ISSUES THAT HAVE DISTRESSED HIS MORE LIBERAL ADHERENTS (INCLUDING ME).   I am not completely ecstatic with Obama’s restatement of his position on FISA. I happened to feel that the FISA court procedures are perfectly just and feasible giving the Intelligence agencies the right to wiretap suspicious telecommunication between Americans and foreigners of interest to the U. S. government without a warrant for a minimum of three days. If an intercepted call requires the immediate attention of the Intel agencies, they have plenty of time to obtain the required warrant to continue the wiretap. I do not understand the objections of Obama or members of the CIA, FBI, or the Defense Intelligence Agency to what they have determined is a disadvantageous delay. As a supporter of Obama, I am perplexed that he has changed his mind on this issue without a full explanation of his new position. It is obvious from his reduction in the polls that others are distressed by his change of opinion on this and other issues that are playing to the right wing of both the Democratic and Republican parties. More importantly, when the Illinois Senator changes his position, he must provide a clear and widely disseminated explanation of the change so that those who support him thoroughly understand what caused him to change his mind on the issues so close to the heart of a free and democratic population. While FISA was the “really big” one that struck me right between the eyes of my civil rights, there are others with equally important to others who are expecting Obama to speak out for the rights of people who have been left behind by the Bush Administration. For example, his alteration in his plan for bringing the American troops home in 16 months. Granted, he should not be setting specific departure dates for troops involved in war such as Iraq, and he certainly placed qualifiers on the redeployment dates, his new position sounds very similar to the McCain and Bush plans. When we consider that the Iraqi government is demanding that we set dates for the redeployment, it appears that Obama, Bush, McCain, and al Maliki are on the same page. Obama should be shouting to the roof tops that the Iraqi government is going precisely what he has been proposing for a year and a half. For a man accused by McCain and Bush of having no experience in matters of war and international affairs, he is precisely on target. I fear he is not forceful enough in speaking out on his views and too hesitant in comparing them with the outmoded perspective to which his opponents hold fastidiously.  On vital issues of pertinent to international relations Obama is precisely on target with the thinking of the broader international community. It is Bush and McCain who are out in left field holding fast to their old cold war ideas and their antiquated posturing. America can no longer hold on to the fantasy that we are the world’s greatest power and that every nation in the world must dance to our tune. The Islamic nations with all of the money that oil pouring into their coffers has gained an enhanced status in the world, a status that only colossal amounts of wealth can buy. They are investing their relatively new affluence in the most prestigious real estate in the world. They are arming themselves against the potential of foreign nations invading them and robbing them of the oil that is the source of their affluence, and are now in a position to call the shots on matters directly related to their own futures. When a primary season continues for well over a year, in a world where the events moves as rapidly as ours, any candidate for office of the presidency may be forced to modify his position on several issues that change as time goes by. We can not expect circumstances of this world to stand still. And we can not expect that any candidate for office will remain constant in his policy stands on every issue. With the political composition of the Middle East changing virtually on a weekly basis, no politician’s opinion on any given subject can be expected to remain unchanged for more than a year when change itself is only phenomenon that is constant in the region. While the Bush administration is attempting vigorously to negotiate a agreement that will give the United States rights to 58 fully armed military bases in Iraq for an indeterminate period of time with limitless access to the Iraqi air space, such an agreement is bogged down in intra-national political squabbles. If these “leases” are, in fact, agreed upon, the McCain “blunder” will be a fact—we will be in Iraq for at least one hundred years. Bush has poured billions of dollars into building these bases to meet the standards of the U. S. with the amenities that would make American military personnel comfortable in the lifestyle of their homeland right in the heart of this desert wasteland. By the time Obama takes office, we can rest assured that Bush will do everything in his rapidly fading power to nail down agreements that will make the McCain projections for withdrawal impossible to circumvent. Paul Bigala, the former counselor to Bill Clinton and campaign advisor to Hillary Clinton urged strongly that Obama not hit back at every false accusation that McCain’s "mean machine" throws at him, rather, he should hit him with his (McCain’s) own flip flops which far out number anything Obama has flipped on. Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report. Posted July 10, 2008.and reprinted on Alternet has identifies 61 different flip-flops McCain has made already before the down and dirty campaign has gotten under way. I am sharing with those of you who have only been listening to the McCain propaganda apparatus put into affect days ago. I urge you to read them carefully and to place them on a bulletin board in front of your desk so that each morning you can review and add to the flip flops that McCain will make as the campaign flows along. Let us begin with a quote from Senator John McCain himself: “McCain argues that flip-flops are an example of a political leader who can't be trusted -- so he might as well drop out of the race.”   1. “McCain thought Bush's warrantless wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.” 2. McCain insisted that everyone, even "terrible killers," "the worst kind of scum of humanity," and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, "deserve to have some adjudication of their cases," even if that means "releasing some of them." McCain now believes the opposite. 3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." 4. In February, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding. 5. McCain favored closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay before he was against it. 6. When Barack Obama talked about going after terrorists in Pakistani mountains with Predators, McCain criticized him for it. He's since come to the opposite conclusion. Foreign Policy 7. McCain was for kicking Russia out of the G8 before he was against it. 8. McCain supported moving "toward normalization of relations" with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite. 9. McCain believed the United States should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite. 10. McCain believed the United States should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite. 11. McCain is both for and against a "rogue state rollback" as a focus of his foreign policy vision. 12. McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty's behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it. 13. McCain was against divestment from South Africa before he was for it. Military Policy 14. McCain recently claimed that he was the "greatest critic" of Rumsfeld's failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as "a mission accomplished." In March 2004, he said, "I'm confident we're on the right course." In December 2005, he said, "Overall, I think a year from now; we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course." 15. McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions, concluding, on multiple occasions, that a Korea-like presence is both a good idea and a bad idea. 16. McCain said before the war in Iraq, "We will win this conflict. We will win it easily." Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was "probably going to be long and hard and tough." 17. McCain has repeatedly said it's a dangerous mistake to tell the "enemy" when U.S. troops would be out of Iraq. In May, McCain announced that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013. 18. McCain was against expanding the GI Bill before he was for it. Domestic Policy 19. McCain defended "privatizing" Social Security. Now he says he's against privatization (though he actually still supports it.) 20. McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn't. 21. McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite. 22. He argued that the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party's policy making. Now he believes the opposite. 23. in 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won't commit to supporting a regulation bill he's co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris' former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser. 24. McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona. 25. McCain's first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn't be "rewarded" for acting "irresponsibly." His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position. 26. McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed; to saying gay marriage shouldn't be allowed. 27. McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. before he supported it. 28. McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he's pro-ethanol. 29. McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag. 30. in 2005, McCain endorsed intelligent design creationism, a year later he said the opposite, and a few months after that, he was both for and against creationism at the same time. Economic Policy 31. McCain was against Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy before he was for them. 32. John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated," and "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a "very strong" understanding of economics. 33. McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal. And soon after that, McCain abandoned his second position and went back to his first. 34. McCain said in 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were "too tilted to the wealthy." By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and falsely argued that he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending. 35. McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite. 36. McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a "'read my lips' candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?" referring to George H.W. Bush's 1988 pledge. "No new taxes," McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, "I'm not making a 'read my lips' statement, in that I will not raise taxes." 37. McCain has changed his entire economic worldview on multiple occasions. 38. McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off economically than they were before Bush took office. Energy Policy 39. McCain supported the moratorium on coastal drilling; now he's against it. 40. McCain recently announced his strong opposition to a windfall tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea. 41. McCain endorsed a cap-and-trade policy with a mandatory emissions cap. In mid-June, McCain announced he wants the caps to be voluntary. 42. McCain explained his belief that a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax would provide an immediate economic stimulus. Shortly thereafter, he argued the exact opposite. 43. McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn't. Immigration Policy 44. McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants' kids who graduate from high school. Now he's against it. 45. on immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own bill. 46. In April, McCain promised voters that he would secure the borders "before proceeding to other reform measures." Two months later, he abandoned his public pledge, pretended that he'd never made the promise in the first place, and vowed that a comprehensive immigration reform policy has always been, and would always be, his "top priority." Judicial Policy and the Rule of Law 47. McCain said he would "not impose a litmus test on any nominee." He used to promise the opposite. 48. McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration's warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite. 49. McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite. Campaign, Ethics, and Lobbying Reform 50. McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn't. 51. in 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving "feedback" on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure. 52. McCain supported a campaign-finance bill, which bore his name, on strengthening the public-financing system. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation. Politics and Associations 53. McCain wanted political support from radical televangelist John Hagee. Now he doesn't. 54. McCain wanted political support from radical televangelist Rod Parsley. Now he doesn't. 55. McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry's Democratic ticket in 2004. 56. McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church. 57. McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as "an agent of intolerance" in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans "deserved" the 9/11 attacks. 58. in 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending "dirty money" to help finance Bush's presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support. 59. McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it. 60. McCain decided in 2000 that he didn't want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he "would taint the image of the 'Straight Talk Express.'" Kissinger is now the honorary co-chair for his presidential campaign in New York. 61. McCain believed powerful right-wing activist/lobbyist Grover Norquist was "corrupt, a shill for dictators, and (with just a dose of sarcasm) Jack Abramoff's gay lover." McCain now considers Norquist a key political ally.   humanity," and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, "deserve to have some adjudication of their cases," even if that means "releasing some of them." McCain now believes the opposite. I want Obama to shot straight with the American people, but the accusations the McCain people have made in recent weeks have caused a four point drop of Obama in the polls. Since we are all familiar with the hills and valleys in polls throughout the long distance run of a presidential political campaign, that four point drop is not a shocker, but he needs to talk to Paul Bigala about the manner in which he presents his changes—not by defending them, but by turning it around and talking about the flip flops of McCain who, as one can readily see has more than his share of major flip flops, most of which his followers who are more than likely blind followers, have paid little or no attention.       8:09:04 PM    comment []

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

AMERICAN VOTERS HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN IRAQ ACCORDING TO CBS’S FORMER CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT   LARA LOGAN IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPRESSIVE FOREIGN REPORTERS I HAVE SEEN SINCE THE WAR BEGAN.   SHE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS AND DOES NOT BLINK AN EYE WHILE TELLING IT.   I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday thru Thursday with the regularity of a sun rise. Last week, Lara Logan, the Chief Correspondence for CBS appeared and told a story that should cause every American to rise up and march against the four television networks while shooting paint guns at the cars of the network executive as they leave their lavish corporate headquarters in their chauffeured black limousines. It is not only the CEO’s of the broadcast networks, or the newspaper conglomerates, it is the producers, directors, i.e. the middle executives who labor diligently to keep their jobs and continue to climb the flimsy corporate ladder by agreeing to publish and to edit only those stories guaranteed to earn their corporation’s approval. It is the producers in the field who determines what stories will be aired and what stories will die on the cutting room floor. It is the editors at the newspapers and the magazines who decide what cover will produce the most newsstand sales, what headlines will draw the biggest readership, and what stories will grab the attention of the readers who have come to read papers by distilling from the headlines what is important to them and what is not. Lara Logan covered the war in Iraq in the early days as a reporter for CBS and later became its chief foreign correspondence.  The biggest hurdle in completing her assignment was to get the “suits” who made the final decision on the stories that would be carried and those that would not. She did everything to persuade her bosses to show the American people the war as it really was being fought. She had to yell, scream, plead and beg to get stories to the American viewers about what was actually happening in a war the people of this country hesitantly agreed to, but later realized that they had been misled, manipulated and conned by their leaders in Washington at the highest levels. She had to get somebody’s attention because she had a story that she considered necessary for the American viewers to see: “In 2007, she sent out an email begging for help because her CBS producers wouldn't air a graphic story, that included critical remarks about the U.S. occupation from Iraqi civilians, called "The Battle for Haifa Street." “Logan’s email, with the one-word subject line of ‘help’, was sent to friends and colleagues imploring them to lobby CBS to highlight that people are interested in seeing the piece. In it, Logan argues that the story is “not too gruesome to air, but rather too important to ignore… It should be seen. And people should know about this.” Most of the time the important stories were passed over by her producer who was more interested in pleasing the bosses in penthouse suites in New York rather than informing the millions of readers who depended on Lara Logan and others like her to fill in the blanks in their knowledge of this misadventure that more and more appeared to be the product of massive lies fathered by special interests. Iraq is the product of what General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address when he urged the American people to be cognizant of and defensively alert to the “military-industrial complex.” Bush, our present president, is not only cognizant of these powerful multifarious corporations that make their money off of war, ammunitions, revolutions and, in the United States, missions, real or fanciful, that will require the maximum amount of military related hardware, or to put it another way, squeeze the largest defense budgets out of their bought and paid for Congress to keep the profits flowing into their coffers, he and his buddy Cheney are members of the inner circle. Lara Logan worked hard for the information she dug up by placing herself and her very life in the deepest and darkest jeopardy. Baghdad is not a safe place. In fact, it may be one of the most dangerous cities in the world ever since the United States bombed this ancient metropolis into shambles. She put it this way: Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever. “If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said. Logan, when interviewed by The New York Times expanded upon her remarks: “Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.” In the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a “60 Minutes” report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha. On “The Daily Show,” Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other journalists when she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the wars now. Early on in the conflict, while our newspapers were soft soaping the hard news stories that were coming to them on the wire, Baghdad was in pandemonium. Electricity was available but a few hours a day if at all; gun fire was coming from behind every darkened corner; only a toxic water supply was available to drink, wash the dishes and the clothes; bodies unattended for days at a time were rotting in the streets—these conditions were the foundation in which the bewildered and confused people of Iraq were introduced to this new-fangled democracy. Equally confounding to the Shiite radicals, the Sunni and Kurdish citizens of this recently conquered Iraq who had waited long-sufferingly for decades to be freed from the vicious dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, was the very real fact that under this new so-called “democratic” regime their lives were ten times worse than they were under the iron fist of Hussein and his unscrupulous and ruthless subordinates. Even today while General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, report to Congress that things have improved, the statistics demonstrate that in Baghdad there are fewer American soldiers killed by insurgents and militia and equally important there are fewer Iraqis being slaughtered by their opposition forces, the success of the surge is at risk. Moqtada ad Sadr, the revolutionary cleric who is the head of the Mahdi Army of 60,000 Shiites is truly the one who has made this surge a success. When Bush called for a surge of 30,000 additional combat troops to be deployed to Baghdad, Moqtada al Sadr called upon his army to retreat into the safe confines of their homes until the American military, feeling they had successfully accomplished their goals, pulled out of Iraq or pulled backed into a neighboring country out of harm’s way. At that point, the Mahdi army would emerge from their hiding places and again take up their objective of committing genocide against their enemies. The success of the surge is a charade, and our military minds have fallen for it. John McCain visited Iraq three times on one of his luxury tours where he was accompanied by a hundred-man teams of body guards, overhead helicopters and was introduced to the Iraqis who following their script to the last word, came home raving about the great success of the surge. Lara Logan and many other journalists know that these American visitors are not being allowed to see the real Iraq. These VIP are exposed to the showcase sections of Baghdad under the protection of heavily guarded military escorts with the top generals who act as their tour guides.