A new look at our political detainees

Warning: Some of the photos below are explicit and shocking. But, then again, so is our treatment of political prisoners on President Bush's watch. Anyway, proceed accordingly.

Chris Jordan, a Photoshop political activist (I just made that up - I don't know what else to call him), does some amazing work. I've posted about him before, but his latest creation and political statement is a pretty powerful one.

From his Website:

Constitution, 2008
8 x 25 feet in five panels

Depicts 83,000 Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs, equal to the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law, during the Bush Administration's war on terror.

You can often catch his work in full scale at different appearances around the country. He currently doesn't have any a appearances listed, but check back to his site often. It's worth it.

(Click any of the photos below for a larger view)

View one...



View two...



A closer view...



Close-up of actual Abu Ghraib photos...

Again, as the election approaches, let's not forget what has happened in our name at Guantánamo Bay, in Iraq and elsewhere; all permitted to happen by the Bush administration and its enablers, a list which John McCain sits atop of.

The ad wars are heating up already...

...and you be the judge about who sounds more professional, or as Logan Murphy so succinctly put it, "presidential."

The video above is supposed to be a parody, but it's a stark example of why Republicans generally are about as funny as 9-11. Back to the drawing board, people. By the way, how hilarious are the dopes who are interviewed in this thing? One can picture a nerdy, Karl Rove-like figure, offering them a hundred Euros off camera to read the cue cards. "I have a friend who's a Marxist who works for Obama!" Yea, that's so 1950. Calling Democrats pinko commies went out with the Eisenhower administration.

This one is hardly better. I guess it's a sure sign of how desperate the McCain campaign has become - they are using Britney Spears (a nut job who couldn't even keep custody of her own kids) and Paris Hilton in their campaign ads. Then again, Hilton is the perfect Republican - someone who has done nothing for the money that she's earned, and who wants to do all she can to hold onto it.

Har, har, har - my knee hurts I've slapped it so much watching these.

On the flip-side, here's Obama's latest ad...

The text in this ad says it all...

Announcer: He’s practicing the politics of the past.
John McCain. His attacks on Barack Obama:
“not true”
“false”
“baloney”
“the low road”
“baseless.”
John McCain. Same old politics. Same failed policies.
Barack Obama supports a $1,000 middle class tax cut.
An energy plan that takes on oil companies, develops alternative fuels, and breaks the grip of foreign oil.
That’s change we can believe in.
Obama: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.

Presidential, indeed.

Dissecting & debunking the Obama smears

I have to admit, it's pretty hard to listen to the audio (above) from two of the world's biggest liars and not become pretty enraged. But, that's how they play - when the truth doesn't fit their paradigm and ideology (and it often doesn't), then just lie, lie, lie. They must say to themselves, "Hey, if McCain can't get elected on his record (which he can't, in all likelihood, but we'll never find out with jackasses like these two around, among others), then we'll just make shit up, and if we repeat it over and over and over again, then people will soon believe it to be true! Hey, cool!" (See the lie about Al Gore saying he "invented the Internet" for a Hall of Fame reference.)

The right's been doing this for the better part of '08 about Obama - the madrassa smear, the Pledge of Allegiance myth, you name it - the litany of lies keeps coming and coming. It's like Hannity and Limbaugh are two addicts, and lies are their crack. (Oops - sorry Rush, I swear I wasn't referring to your OxyContin addiction, really! Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that a drug addict who used to put down other drug addicts before he got caught is named Rush?!? Just wondering.)

From Media Matters:

From the July 29 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: So how did Senator Barack Obama's oversea trip resonate with voters? A brand-new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that only Democrats were impressed, with 53 percent calling the trip positive. Republicans overwhelmingly reject -- overwhelmingly rejected the trip, while 41 percent of independents held no opinion at all. The poll also reveals voters are twice as likely to classify media coverage of Obama as unfairly positive rather than unfairly negative, and in the case of McCain, the opposite is the truth, with many more seeing coverage of him as negative.

Joining us now, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mike Gallagher, former [House Minority Leader Dick] Gephardt [D-MO] campaign manager Steve Elmendorf, and Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley.

Mike, you and I talk about this often on the radio. No big surprises here, especially in light of him, you know, abandoning the troop visit because the cameras weren't around -- allowed and the campaign wasn't allowed. I think this is a net negative for him in the end. Your thoughts?

GALLAGHER: Oh, it has to be. I mean, it's -- it's stunning that he's not -- doesn't have a commanding lead right now in the polls. But even with the fawning media coverage, the kernels of truth slip out.

From the July 29 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: You say that he's stunned by the truth. What is the truth as you see it? Why -- are -- are you suggesting that Barack Obama does not value the service of our men and women in uniform?

DAVIS: No, I'm sure he does. And I'm sure that the men and women in our uniform would've valued the -- the visit that he had indicated early on that he was gonna make, you know, when he -- when he arrived in Landstuhl. I don't know what the truth is, because out of the Obama campaign themselves and Mr. Gibbs in particular, there have been probably 11 separate excuses for why they didn't visit the troops. Now, if they don't know why they didn't visit the troops, I'm sure as heck not gonna figure it out.

Above is video from a recent Hannity & Colmes, with Hannity repeating on camera the same lies he said on his radio show.

Where's the proof, you say? How about NBC's Andrea Mitchell, a reporter who historically hasn't always been very friendly to Obama - she was there, with Obama, unlike Limbaugh and Hannity.

Mitchell's take: "There was any intention, let me make this absolutely clear, the press was never going to go on the trip [to visit the troops in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center].

Oops! I certainly hope people remember this, two months from now, when McCain (or, more likely, 527s and other surrogates who are backing McCain, begin repeating the accusation over and over and over, as if it's a fact that Obama wouldn't visit the troops because cameras couldn't come.) It's not a fact, never has been, and never will be.

But, in a way, the McCain camp (with the help of State TV, Faux News) have scored a small victory, because of course this is all that the press is talking about now, not the very successful trip that Obama had overseas.

It's okay though, because McCain is looking more and more desperate as the days wear on.

Again, Media Matters has much more on this latest Obama smear that's patently absurd, and worst of all, completely false.

A New response from LegalZoom Re: Savage

Last week, I posted a boilerplate response from LegalZoom after I wrote them regarding the company's advertising on Talk Radio Network, the parent company that employs Michael "Savage" Wiener. (Savage made some despicable comments about children with autism a few weeks back.)

Anyway, this morning I found a new response from LegalZoom in my inbox that I thought I'd share with you:

Dear R.J.,
My name is Scott and I run the advertising at LegalZoom.com. I received a copy today of a templated customer service email that went out to you in response to an email you sent to us regarding the Michael Savage show. I wanted to specifically address your email to us because I've seen a handful like it over the past week, especially since Mr. Savage made his autism remarks, and I hope to clear up some misperceptions.

LegalZoom has never sponsored the Michael Savage show or paid for ads in the Michael Savage show. We very likely will never advertise in that show. [Emphasis his]

There are a couple of websites that correctly say that we have advertised on Talk Radio Network. That is indeed the network that carries his program. But that in no way means that we are supporting or sponsoring the Savage show with one penny of our money.

In fact, we have asked the network to be sure that they do not air any of our ads in the Michael Savage program. Everything we buy must fall outside of Savage.

Granted, not everybody will like where we advertise, because you can find LegalZoom ads in conservative talk, liberal talk, and straight-down-the-middle talk. We're not out to support a viewpoint or opinion: we're merely trying to reach out to potential customers through advertising with our message of convenient, reliable legal document services that most Americans want or need.

So while we do advertise in lots of opinionated talk, I have to strongly reiterate that we are not a Michael Savage advertiser.

Please let me know if I can provide any more information, and thanks for your email and concerns.

Sincerely,
Scott MacDonell
VP Advertising
LegalZoom.com, Inc.

LegalZoom deserves some praise for the follow-up here, but the more I think about it, the more I think advertisers should not advertise on any of TRN's shows, since it sees fit to employ a despicable, contemptible hate monger like Savage-Wiener.

I reiterate once again that this is not a free speech issue - Savage-Wiener has the right to say whatever he wants to say, and I don't think he should be fired for his remarks. But, that doesn't mean that advertisers are under any obligation to support such a show, or a company that would choose to employ him.'

My letter-writing has fallen off lately about Savage (vacation looms), but I'm going to pick up the pace over the weekend. We need to keep up the heat on his show's advertisers, because it's working! Many companies have publicly stated that they will not advertise on his show, including Aflac. The more companies we can convince to jump ship, the better.

I'm writing MacDonnell in the next few days when I get a chance to praise his company for not advertising on Savage-Wiener's show, but that's not good enough. LegalZoom is still supporting a company that employs this hate monger, and we have to let that company and other companies like it know that they will not get our business until their support stops, unequivocally and without exception. I urge all you all to do the same. You can reach Scott MacDonnell from LegalZoom at: scottm@legalzoom.com.

By the way, Media Matters is doing tremendous work in documenting Savage's remarks, as well as giving activists tools to combat his hateful language. MM's latest entry on Savage is Here, but if you click around on the site, you can find much more information on Savage and his autism comments.

Forbes: Cap & Trade won't go far w/McCain

It shouldn't be news that Republicans aren't exactly the party in favor of combating global warming. And John McCain should be no exception.

Flashback to 2000, when George W. Bush promised that he would cap carbon emissions if elected president. It took him about a nanosecond to break that promise. In fact, Bush has gone out of his way to do nothing about global warming, which, in effect, is a reversal, since in the last eight years, our environment has gotten so much worse.

Fast forward to now - John McCain is simply the latest Republican candidate for national office who is painting himself green and promising to do a great deal about global warming if elected.

Don't believe it.

What's more, one of McCain's economic advisers, Steve Forbes, had this to say in the footage above about Cap & Trade, a program that would limit corporations' carbon emissions, but would allow them to trade and pay for the right to emit more:

I think cap and trade is going to go the way of some other things, as you may remember, when he came into office, Bill Clinton had a proposal of tax carbons and stuff like that. I don't think those things are going to get very far as people start to examine the details of them.

I sincerely doubt that many environmentalists are buying into McCain's empty rhetoric about global warming anyway, but anyone who is should certainly take a look at the footage above and do just a bit of reading. Some cursory reading, McCain's voting record, as well as which organizations he accepts campaign cash from, will quickly reveal that he's no friend of the environmental movement.

W loves big business; Women? Whatever!

This one got my blood boiling earlier today. This week, it's anticipated by Washington insiders that the House will finally bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor for a vote, legislation that would help close the wage gap between working men and women and “close loopholes that have allowed employers to avoid responsibility” for discriminatory pay.

It certainly makes sense to me. After all, women have been getting the shaft for decades centuries in our country for doing the exact same jobs as men (and their being allowed to even perform the same jobs as men is a recent phenomena in many fields). And this isn't a historical embarrassment for the employers and management executives, this is going on to this day.

In 1980, women, on average, made 60 cents on the dollar compared to men for doing the same job. In 2000, that number had narrowed to about 75 cents, and today it hovers between 80 and 85 cents, depending on which study or statistics you consult. Progress? Sure, but it's still an outrage. And it's instances like this where Congress can step in and right a wrong, ending injustice in how American women are paid. Makes sense, right?

Naturally, Our National Embarrassment is threatening a veto. From Think Progress:

In an official statement, the White House announced it would veto the bill:

The bill would unjustifiably amend the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to allow for, among other things, unlimited compensatory and punitive damages, even when a disparity in pay was unintentional. It also would encourage discrimination claims to be made based on factors unrelated to actual pay discrimination by allowing pay comparisons between potentially different labor markets. In addition, it would require the Department of Labor (DOL) to replace its successful approach to detecting pay discrimination with a failed methodology that was abandoned because it had a 93 percent false positive rate. Thus, if H.R. 1338 were presented to the President, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.

Bush is clearly in Disneyland. For a bumbling, disastrous president now searching for his "legacy," this was a real chance to make a difference among the working class in America. Then again, I probably give the president too much credit, since he's never been a worker, and he's aptly demonstrated he has very little class. 

Here's hoping that Congress passes the Bill will overwhelming force, thereby sending Bush's veto pen right where it belongs. Hmm, just wondering - where are all of those bitter, angry women who were all hip to vote for John McCain because Hillary didn't get the nomination? Shrinking like Bush's popularity, one can only hope. I mean, really, that makes a load of sense - vote for a guy who has no problem calling his wife a "cunt" and who has made repeated, appalling jokes about rape, and whose party would rather side with big business than try to ensure that women get the pay they deserve.

Seriously, clear thinking women who aren't hopelessly ideological can't possibly consider voting for McCain, which would in so many ways be four more years of Bush's policies, can they? Only time will tell.

Seriously, what's next? African-Americans voting for David Duke?

Ted Stevens indicted

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, has been federally indicted on seven felony counts. (By the way, apropos of nothing, but I love the dopey photo that the press insists on using of him, with the goofy smile - MSNBC uses it in the video above.)

Quite frankly, considering the way the Bush administration has politicized the appointments of federal prosecutors, this indictment is certainly saying something. Yes, every person is innocent until proven guilty, but there must be some pretty long evidence; he's been under investigation for quite some time, and his home in Girdwood, Alaska, was raided last summer, just over a year ago.

New York Times:

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican senator in United States history and a figure of great influence in Washington as well as in his home state, has been indicted on federal charges of failing to report gifts and income.

Mr. Stevens, 84, was indicted on seven felony counts related to renovations on his home in Alaska. The charges arise from an investigation that has been under way for more than a year, in connection with the senator's relationship with a businessman who oversaw the home-remodeling project.

"I am innocent of these charges and intend to prove that," Mr. Stevens said several hours after the indictment was announced. He said in a statement that he had temporarily relinquished his Senate leadership positions "until I am absolved of these charges."

[...]

Prosecutors say Mr. Stevens, who referred to his home as "the chalet," accepted goods and services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, ranging from an outdoor grill to extensive home remodeling and architectural advice. Not only did Mr. Stevens fail to report the items on his Senate financial disclosure form, as required, but he took active steps to conceal the receipt of the goods and services, the indictment says.

Mr. Stevens said he was saddened by the charges and had "proudly served this nation and Alaska for over 50 years." He said he had "never knowingly submitted a false disclosure form required by law as a U.S. senator."

Stevens is charged with failing to report over $250,000 in gifts, and for backing legislation that favored his son, Alaska State Sen. Ben Stevens (whose senate office has also been searched twice in connection with the federal probe, although he hasn't been charged).

I'm not shedding any tears for Stevens, that's for sure. I certainly hope that justice prevails, wherever it may lead, but today's indictment will certainly hurt Stevens' chances at reelection, and he's already in a tough fight with his opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

What's more, Stevens has been one of Congress' biggest opponents of Net Neutrality, so I'll make no secret that I'd love to see him out of Congress, no matter how it happens.

Must see: HBO's Generation Kill

Updated: HBO is showing the first two parts, back to back, tonight starting at 8:30. That, combined with part three, which is repeating all week, and you can catch up (or set your TiVo) with the series. Trust me, do it - you'll be glad you did.

HBO is right in the middle of its mini-series, Generation Kill, based on the book of the same name by Evan Wright.

In short, this series is another triumph by HBO. It's not another run-of-the-mill, cheer leading flick about the U.S. Military. In fact, in many ways, it's the exact opposite of that. The 1:10 episodes really bring the horrifying, ill-advised and tragic invasion and occupation of Iraq by our country into sharp focus. Every time I watch a new episode, I can't help but think that the War in Iraq is my generation's Vietnam (and I suppose Gen Y's, too); both tragedies that will be looked back on 50 years from now as having devastating consequences for our economy, and standing in the world.

Anyway, the series is superbly cast, and its sometimes callow sense of humor, especially from the mouth of Cpl. Josh Ray Peterson, actually provides some much needed levity to the horrors of the invasion.

Part four of the seven-part mini-series airs the Sunday night on HBO. Even if you're missed the first three, you can quickly catch up on the official Website, and it won't take long to catch on. (In addition, HBO reruns the episodes during the week, so it's not too late to catch part three this week.)

I never cease to be amazed that groundbreaking movies like this continue to be produced by our corporate media (Time-Warner is the parent of HBO). Call the cable network an island of reality in a sea of diarrhea.

I own Wright's book, and I plan on reading it over vacation, so when I'm finished with it, I'll bring you a review. If the book is half as good as the movie, it's going to be a riveting read.

A McCain flip-flop in 29 easy seconds= campaign ca$h

This one should surprise no one - it seems that McCain has been the beneficiary of mountains of cash from the oil and gas industry since his high-profile reversal on offshore drilling.

From WaPo:

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

McCain said the policy reversal came as a response to rising voter anger over soaring energy prices. At the time, about three-quarters of voters responding to a Washington Post-ABC News poll said prices at the pump were causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.

[...]

"We have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production," he said. "It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."

McCain delivered the speech before heading to Texas for a series of fundraisers with energy industry executives, and the day after the speech he raised $1.3 million at a private luncheon and reception at the San Antonio Country Club, according to local news accounts.

"The timing was significant," said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan campaign finance reform group that conducted the analysis of McCain's oil industry contributions. "This is a case study of how a candidate can change a policy position in the interest of raising money."

Brian Rogers, a McCain campaign spokesman, said he considers any suggestion that McCain weighed fundraising into his calculation on drilling policy "completely absurd." Rogers noted that oil and gas money in June still accounted for a very small fraction of the $48 million raised by the campaign and by the Republican National Committee through its Victory Fund.

"John McCain takes positions because he thinks it's the right thing to do for America," Rogers said. "He has a long track record of doing that. And he's often made decisions that hurt with his fundraising base."

Well, if McCain comes up short in November, his spokesman, Brian Rogers, certainly has a career ahead of him in stand-up comedy. Does he honestly expect anyone to believe that McCain's modification of his position on drilling (Read: flip-flop) has nothing to do with campaign cash? If you believe that, I've got some Enron stock at rock-bottom prices you might be interested in.

My prediction is that we will see plenty more of these reversals by McCain, especially in light of the fact that he now has such a fundraising disadvantage, at least in his mind. (I don't buy that, either - McCain has been exploiting loopholes in the campaign finance law that bears his name for months and months now, which certainly played no small part in Obama's decision to forego public financing.)

h/t Crooks & Liars

Trailer for Oliver Stone's W released

The first trailer has been released for Oliver Stone's W. has hit the Internet, and so far, it looks pretty good. (Okay, I have a bias toward loving his films, and I know this trailer doesn't show too much.)

Anyway, the film looks superbly cast (as all Stone films are), and early sneak peeks reveal that W. will be much like his 1995 film, Nixon, that reverted between different part's of Nixon's life.

I've heard many rumors that it will be released in theaters before the election on Nov. 4. Bet on it - Stone isn't only a terrific filmmaker - he's also a very smart businessman.

No truth to the rumor that Stone's electricity bill will be splashed all over the Internet the day the film is released. [/smirk] But, I have a twenty that says that the right-wing noise machine is already preparing a dossier to discredit him the minute the film hits theaters, so get ready to ignore those smears accordingly.

McCain taking the lower road thus far

Anyone remember when McCain pledged to run a clean campaign? To refresh, he vowed in a very public way, on national TV, to run "an honorable and dignified campaign" against Barack Obama. I distinctly remember McCain (and his wife) saying that if any mudslinging were to happen during this campaign, it would come "from the other side." The problem with a promise like that is, what's "honorable and dignified" and "mudslinging" to one person, is perfectly acceptable to another in a political campaign. For example, Karl Rove's definition of what's underhanded in a political campaign would differ from just about any reasonable human being's definition of what that is. (Rove is an unacknowledged consultant to the McCain campaign.)

Anyway, so much for McCain's "clean campaign." Really, McCain broke that promise a long time ago, but lately, he's taken the witticisms to a whole new level, and by that I mean lower level. McCain's latest undignified remarks are regarding his consistent questioning of Barack Obama's commitment to the troops and to victory in Iraq.

First off, as I wrote yesterday, no one has adequately explained just what victory in Iraq is. (Tell me this isn't Vietnam all over again - first LBJ, and then Nixon, both refused to pull out because they didn't want to go down in history as "the first president to lose a war." [Nixon was quoted as much on his tapes.])

I love how McCain in the footage above explicitly states that he's "not questioning his [Obama's] patriotism," yet he then basically questions his patriotism, and as George Stephanopoulos says, Obama's "honor," too.

That's a page right out of Karl Rove's playbook - Bush and Cheney have been doing it for years. Think back to the run-up to the War in Iraq, when they both would say that Iraq "had nothing to do with 9-11," then in the next sentence talk about al-Qaeda in Iraq. Actually, early on, Cheney even went further than that, saying that members of the Iraqi government met with hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague, when the intelligence clearly determined that the meeting had not taken place (this from George Tenet's book).

Hearing an arrogant McCain dismissively sniff that Barack Obama "doesn't understained" [spelling intentional] about Iraq makes me laugh. McCain's comments in recent weeks clearly demonstrate that he lacks plenty of understanding himself when it comes to foreign affairs, including what's going on in Iran and Iraq. The incident last week where CBS spliced his comments together to blatantly omit a whopper of an error is just one of those examples. And I don't buy into the media's explanation that they are "gaffes," either. A gaffe happens when someone makes a mistake, forgets a name, or pronounces something wrong, or forgets a date, but the implication is that people who commit gaffes actually know the facts.

McCain doesn't. When he gets on TV and says arrogantly and dismissively that "it's a matter of history" that the Troop Surge in Iraq (which began in January 2007) was responsible for the Anbar Awakening, which began three months earlier, it's a clear demonstration that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. There's no other plausible explanation, other than that his mind is going, circa Ronald Reagan in his second term.

Chuck Hagel was absolutely right when he took umbrage with McCain on yesterday's Face the Nation, too, when he says that McCain is on "very thin ground," by asserting that Obama would rather "lose a war to win a campaign."

McCain's comments about Obama in the footage above are probably among the most disgraceful I've heard a presidential candidate say about his opponent in my adult life. If there's a worse example of a presidential candidate saying something about his opponent in the last 25 years, I certainly can't think of it.

Also interesting to hear Faux News taking the predictable line courtesy of its GOP sponsors, specifically Chris Wallace echoing the GOP talking point that Obama could have gone to see the troops "without campaign staff" as the Pentagon directed. Hmm, who runs the Pentagon again? It's not a stretch to say that this was an attempt to blatantly embarrass Obama. Should he have gone anyway? Sure, but I'm guessing there's a lot more to this story than McCain's campaign ad is telling us.

And more to the point, I guess it was okay for John McCain to stroll down the street in a Baghdad Market last summer, flanked by dozens and dozens of U.S. troops and helicopters, in what amounted to a campaign appearance, but when Obama wants to do something similar, it's the world's biggest sin, right? Hmm, let's re-examine - McCain, as a declared presidential candidate, pulls scads of troops away from their real jobs so he can stroll down the street in Baghdad, and President Bush lands on an aircraft carrier to laughingly declare Mission Accomplished (when it wasn't), and Obama is politicizing our troops? Uh, sure.

This whole "visiting the troops" pseudo-scandal is being cooked up by Fox News, McCain and the likes of Matt Drudge to try and smear Obama after a very successful trip overseas, and in the end, it shouldn't amount to much. If it does, than this country is in even deeper trouble than I thought.

Sen. Claire McCaskill was spot on when she said that Republicans could criticize just about anything Obama said, i.e. - he took heat for not going to Iraq, then he took heat for going to Iraq, etc. Gimme a break. It's another attempt by the right to blunt Obama's surging popularity.

McCain's Iraq cred. problem rears its head

I won't pretend to fully understand the so-called Anbar Awakening, or all of the incredibly complex situation in Iraq, but then again, I'm not running for president; John McCain is.

And I do know that this past week, McCain proved to the world (for about the dozenth time) that he doesn't have a GD clue about Iraq. You know, the country that he can't stop talking about, because he has no real clue about how to fix our problems at home.

To get something as major wrong as the Anbar Awakening, which took began in September '06, a full three months before the Surge, which was announced in January '07, is very telling about McCain's credibility.

Whenever I see McCain on TV, I hear him saying, over and over, as if his brain is set to repeat, "Barack Obama was wrong about the Surge. We are on our way to winning in Iraq." I don't know if Obama is wrong about the Surge, and neither is McCain. Right now, things look better than they did, but it's very much premature to say that we are on our way to "winning," especially because no one can really explain to me what will constitute a victory, and how we're going to get there. (Especially without a draft.)

More importantly, though - Obama may have been incorrect about a few things in Iraq, but McCain is wrong on just about everything else. He's clueless about time lines, who's killing our U.S. soldiers, etc. And the media is very kind in calling his dozens of "misstatements" "gaffes." They aren't gaffes, they are ignorance.

Nice job by Keith Olbermann of pointing out the obvious. We are very lucky to even have his show, because of our corporate dominated, (mostly) right-wing media. I'm just glad that lies like this get exposed on an almost-nightly basis by him, because according to most on the right, if it's not on The Drudge Report, or it doesn't appear on Fox News, or if addict Limbaugh didn't say it, then it never happened.

Oh, and CBS, by doing McCain such a huge favor, makes McCain look even more foolish by complaining about all of the favorable press that Obama is getting.

Weekend Cartoons

Lots of thought-provoking cartoons to get to today, so I'll get right to them. As always, my thoughts are below selected cartoons.

Hope you are having a good weekend wherever you are, and that you're staying cool - it's downright oppressive here in Philadelphia today.

The current banking crisis reminds me in many ways of the S&L Crisis from the late 1980s and early 1990s, which ended up costing taxpayers about $125 billion. Except the current crisis is much worse, and many experts fear that we haven't hit bottom yet in the housing crisis. If not, I don't even want to know what bottom could be. One common thread through both crises, though, is a lack of regulation and oversight, both as a result of deregulation from Republican administrations. Don't take my word for it - look it up yourself.

I've no idea why the American people elect many Republicans who run on the idea that Government is the problem (another wonderful legacy of Reganomics), and once they get into government, they royally screw it up. It shouldn't be a mystery - anyone who thinks that government is the problem had ought not be put in charge of that government. Yet, we continue to elect these people, over and over.

I seriously get a kick out of people who are driving absurdly large SUVs, many of whom of complaining about the price of gas now. That's what they get for buying rolling monuments to themselves. Truckers, I have sympathy for; their livelihoods are being threatened. Moronic yuppies in the Hummers deserve the astronomical fuel bill they are getting.

...and probably more times if McSame gets elected. Of course, he even admitted last week that a 16-month withdraw plan is mostly acceptable. Like he had a choice - it's what Obama is proposing, and what's more the Iraqi government more or less endorsed Obama's plan last week.

Of course, McCain's 4,988,011th flip flop gets almost no press, but that's exactly what it was, a reversal. Anyone remember when McCain said we might be in Iraq for "100 years"? Yea, he's not saying that now.

I'll get to this story a bit later in a separate post, but it's another example of many dozens where the troops are getting royally screwed over by this administration (& Bush's Pentagon) - you know, the same administration that never misses an opportunity to pimp the hackneyed Support the Troops slogan. Both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been waged with slogans. If the Bush administration is winning one war, it's the war on our language.

Wow, the taxpayer pays, again. Earlier this year it was Bear Stearns, and now Freddie and Fannie. When will it end. I don't have a problem with the feds bailing out both businesses (or at least throwing them a life line) - for economic stability, just about any expert you'll find says it's a must. Fine. But, when will Congress wake up and impose more regulations and rules on the mortgage industry? Until they do, the taxpayer is getting screwed. The only people making out in these types of deals where the feds bail out companies are the companies' investors. What a formula - If we do well, we win, & if we lose, the taxpayer pays anyway. Not bad work if you can get it.

I can't be the only one troubled by the FDA's lack of an ability to get to the bottom of the salmonella crisis. I love it that last week, the FDA lifted bans on tomatoes, without finding out the cause of the outbreak. Hmm, that's comforting. The people who hate America and really want to do us harm have got to be the dumbest mother ------- in all the world, because in many ways, the Bush administration has done a patently pathetic job in strengthening Homeland Security. Hey, we've got to pay for the tax cuts to Bush's benefactors, so there's that concern.

Talk about in the public interest. I don't think many of the people deep within the bowels of the Bush administration have ever muttered (or even thought about) that phrase very much.

I wonder how many farmers' lives were destroyed when the tomato ban was put into effect? What's more, they are undoubtedly going to need help. I wonder who will be paying for that? I wouldn't have any problem with it, provided the government had viable proof that the outbreak was coming from tomatoes. It didn't, and now we probably have thousands of farmers who are going to need federal aid.

It's incidents like this that severely damage my faith in our government. Maybe I should just say this government, meaning the people who are currently in power.

I posted this one because I think it's unadulterated bullshit. McCain got a free ride for at least three months, because the GOP race was over early. Now that he's getting some long-needed scrutiny, the press is in love with Obama. Whatever. I've spent so much time debunking this, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it anymore.

If I had a dollar for every negative story that has appeared about Obama (most of them from the Repube propaganda machines of The Drudge Report, Faux News and the GOP hate mongering radio talk show hosts), I could pay off the national deficit.

I'll never tire of saying it or writing it, but it was great fun watching McCain trying to do just about anything to get some media attention last week. McCain and his ilk of Lindsay Graham, Rudy 9iu1ian1 and Mitt Romney were all griping that Obama had never been to Iraq. Then, he goes, and all they do is whine. Again, you can't have it both ways, guys.

It's amazing that Bush is finally discovering the power of diplomacy, about 7 1/2 years too late. If he knew its power long ago, we might not even be in Iraq right now. Somehow, I think he would have found a "reason" to go to war, though.

The Bush energy policy = the Bush Iraq policy; they are both circling the bowl, ready to get sucked down the drain. And that's exactly where both belong.

Military tribunals definitely have their place - after all, the tribunals in Germany following World War II brought many of the Nazi leaders to justice. However, the way the Bush administration has elected to go about them, as secretly as possible, is against the spirit of openness that our form of government is based on. Then again, I don't expect much more from one of the most secretive administrations in U.S. history.

This cartoon, sadly, needs little explanation. As food and fuel costs continue to skyrocket, many people are using their credit cards to stay afloat, because they have no other choice. What's worse, things don't seem to be getting much better. The consumer price index in June increased 1.2 percent, the biggest one-month jump since 1982. It's little wonder the economy is the American public's biggest concern for the fall election.

It's little wonder that McCain, who has voted with Bush on an overwhelming majority of his Congressional votes, is All Iraq, all the time - any domestic issue discussion demonstrates just how hapless the candidate is. Hmm, yet another way McCain = Bush.

It's too bad we couldn't get it right the first time. Maybe we would have, had troops not been siphoned off for the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist (and they almost always annoy me), but I will go to my grave thinking that Bush and Co. let bin Laden go, because had they caught him, then the war's over, the boogeyman's gone, and domestic issues may very well have been on the front burner in the '04 election. And, had that been the case, President Kerry would be running for his second term this year.

I've seen lots of dumb cartoons poking fun at Al Gore, but I applaud him for his efforts. We might not get there in 10 years (actually, it would be one of the biggest miracles in the history of this country), but at least Gore is trying to give the green, renewable energy movement a much needed kick in the ass. God only knows, it needs it. I haven't heard many specifics from Obama (!), and McCain's brainchild is a $300 million battery. We can and we must do much better, period.

Isn't the one above the truth - Big Oil and the politicians they have in their pocket (and the media outlets, too), are playing off of the public's outrage at gasoline prices that have skyrocketed in the past few years by trying to get access to environmentally sensitive areas for more exploration. Or government had better not give it to them. My attitude is, IT'S OUR OIL, not Big Oil's.

And if the petroleum companies want access to this oil and Congress decides on it, the fee for drilling should be doubled. If these @!#$%&!!@% companies don't want to cut the price of gas, with record profits during the last 4-5 years, then the government should tax the piss out of them, or they will be denied access to the remote areas, without exception. (Oh yea, it's letter writing time!)

Read about LegalZoom's customer "service"

Late this past week, I heard back from LegalZoom.com regarding its advertising on Michael Savage's radio show in the wake of his pathetic, gutless, hateful comments regarding autism, as well its advertisements on Talk Radio Network's home page. The letter below no doubt ranks very high on my list of all-time stupidest response letters I've ever received from a company. Quite frankly, a non-response would have been better than a response like this one.

It reads:

Dear RJ,

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments. At LegalZoom, we’re always open to hearing the feedback and viewpoints of our customers.

LegalZoom was founded by attorneys who have worked at some of the most prestigious law firms in the country. We have used our expertise to make it convenient and affordable for people to take care of important legal matters on their own, without a costly attorney.

Thank you again for sharing your comments.

Sincerely,

LegalZoom Customer Support
7083 Hollywood Blvd, Suite 180
Los Angeles, CA 90028
www.LegalZoom.com
1-800-773-0888

Gee, I sure am glad that the company really took the time to read my letter and to craft an appropriate response. If you like, you can send LegalZoom a quick e-mail telling the people there what you think of both their advertising policies, as well as their customer service for being seemingly indifferent to the autism community.

By the way, the e-mail above came from Chyna S. from the e-mail address legalzoom@custhelp.com. Great stuff - one thing's for sure, with a response like this, LegalZoom will never, ever get my business - the company clearly doesn't deserve it.

McCain entertains... himself

This is some pretty good video of Sen. John McCain cracking himself up during an event with Lance Armstrong a few days ago. Notice all of the polite applause in the background. Pretty interesting that McCain would choose to meet with Armstrong, an alleged cheater in the Tour de France. Maybe Armstrong is giving him tips on how to cheat to win. Wait, McCain has plenty of Karl Rove's minions (including Rove himself, as a consultant, even though it's going unacknowledged in the press) to use smear and fear tactics to try and win in November.

I can only hope and pray that American won't fall for these same tactics for three elections in a row. Obama had better be ready to fight back against the wholesale lies that are being spewed out by McCain's campaign. More on those in a minute.

McCain only wishes to discuss Iraq on his terms

This is a pretty telling piece of footage from this past week, when John McCain appeared on Wolf Blitzer's show to discuss Iraq. Blitzer takes him to task for his support of a war (that should never have happened, a fact Blitzer alludes to [Bravo, Wolf]), and McCain, like the good GOP-trained robot, reverts to the Republican boilerplate about Hussein having chemical weapons production capability, and blah, blah, blah.

I'll certainly concede a little bit that Obama may not have been completely right about the Troop Surge, but he sure was right about being against the war from the beginning. What's more, despite McCain's rhetoric, I strongly feel that the last chapters on the Surge have yet to be written. McCain's haughty arrogance on TV that the Surge is "working" and that we are going to see our way to "victory" smacks me as about as dumb as Bush's Mission Accomplished. I firmly don't believe that we can ever achieve what most would call a "victory" in Iraq. But, we can spend hundreds of billions more, while simultaneously killing thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Wow, some victory that will be, God only knows how many more years down the road. Any victory we achieve will surely be pyrrhic.

Iraq certainly is an important issue, and despite what some media outlets are claiming, not every American is bored or uninterested in what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's just that we have bigger worries right now, like how to pay for mortgages and gas bills (and soon, heating bills).

However, with candidate McCain, we are going to get 100 more days of all-Iraq, all the time, because neither McCain nor his advisers know squat about getting us out of the economic mess we are in.

McCain disses WSJ reporter

This is some pretty telling footage of John McCain dissing a reporter from The Wall St. Journal a few days ago, supposedly for coverage that he didn't find very flattering in the paper's pages.

First, check out Sen. Lindsay Graham's expression off to the right - hilarious!

On a more serious note, for the life of me, I'm wondering why McCain would do such a thing? I'll never understand why candidates and presidents do that - a smarter guy would realize that whatever coverage he's unhappy with, it's not going to stop if he refuses to take questions from a certain media outlet's reporter. In fact, it won't get him any favor with the WSJ, in all likelihood. I think it was Winston Churchill who once most famously said, "Never get in a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel."

What's more, since the WSJ was taken over by Murdoch, it's maintained its reputation as a very conservative newspaper, which is on McCain's turf, so that makes it all the more puzzling. If the snub was directed toward the New York Times, I could understand it better (but certainly not condone it).

We need him, to restore what's been lost

I've written it and alluded to it many times in the past few months, and I'll no doubt say it again many more times over the next 100 days ~ we need Obama. We need him to restore what the last eight years have done to our standing in the world. 

There are many who believe that our standing doesn't matter. I'm certainly not one of them. From getting Osama bin Laden, trade, global warming and treaties to fostering relationships with allies and at least having a dialogue with our enemies, our standing and resolve matter. We cannot and must not elect someone who will give us four more years of mostly the same failed policies, and I do believe that is precisely what John McCain represents.

A great example is the speech that Obama gave a few days ago in Berlin. It was notably apolitical - it wasn't a campaign swing or a "premature victory lap," as McCain characterized it. Not once did Obama mention the words "Bush" or of "McCain." (This contrasts pretty sharply to President Bush all but calling Obama an appeaser in front of the Knesset in Israel a few months ago. Where was the Dixie Chicks outrage? I'm still waiting.) Instead, Obama delivered a stirring and impassioned speech about the challenges we face, how we've overcome them in the past, and how if we work together we can overcome present and future ones, too.

All I hear from McCain is Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, and how much of a genius he is that the Surge is currently working. What's more, his supposed "expertise" in foreign affairs is a total sham, every bit as much as Rudy 9iu1ian1's supposed "expertise" in foreign affairs. Every time McCain opens his mouth, something incorrect comes out of it - he mistakes Iraq for Afghanistan, his time lines are all wrong, and he loves to rewrite history, banking on the fact that many in America have the political attention span of about three days.

Here's hoping that voters this time won't be fooled by a clever PR effort, circa Bush in 2000, and especially in 2004. We simply cannot afford this on so many fronts.

I found this on via Firedoglake - words of eloquence by Obama during his overseas trip. After eight years of Bush's asinine, scripted comments, this is welcome indeed...

[Click for larger image]

Hoover responds to Savage controversy

It's refreshing to see that some companies still "get it." (The picture at right could not be more apropos.) Today, I found out about one of them - the parent company that owns the Hoover brand of vacuum cleaners and products. I hadn't even gotten around to writing the company yet, and I heard from a public relations practitioner who works for the company about my Michael Savage post from late last week. Since I didn't write them, it's obvious that the company is concerned with its image, and she found me.

Here is her letter, left as a comment under my original posting about Michael Savage's comments regarding autism:

In response to this posting that lists Hoover as an advertiser associated with The Michael Savage Show and Talk Radio Network, I would like to clarify that Hoover and its parent company, TTI Floor Care North America, are not and have never been sponsors of or advertisers on The Michael Savage Show.

While under the ownership of the Whirlpool Corporation, Hoover-branded ads aired during The Laura Ingraham Show on Talk Radio Network; however, ads have not aired on that program since December 2006 when Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd agreed to purchase the Hoover brand from Whirlpool.

We value feedback from our customers and hope you will contact us directly should you have any questions about this important matter.

Nicole Sinclair
TTI Floor Care North America
Public Relations and Promotions Manager

Just to verify that the letter was legit, I tracked down Sinclair at TTI Floor Care, the parent company that owns the Hoover brand, and left her a voice mail, telling her I appreciated her response.

Now this is exactly the type of response I hope for when I write a letter to a company concerning its advertising policies. And, to repeat, I didn't even get around to writing Hoover, I had just listed the company in my original posting, because it was listed on Talk Radio Network's Website as a "satisfied customer." (Note: TRN has taken down its "partial list of satisfied customers" that used to be in its advertising section. I love it - guess they won't be making that mistake again.) I could still take umbrage about how a company shouldn't even advertise or support a company that employs Savage, but Hoover doesn't advertise on Savage's show, and that's certainly good enough for me.

Bravo to Hoover, and the same goes for Ms. Sinclair for taking the time to write. This is obviously a company that is giving thought as to where it advertises, and what message it's sending its customers by doing so. This company deserves our business.

It's good to see that companies are starting to take notice about the consequences of advertising on Savage's show. In addition to Hoover, Aflac gets it as well.

Considering how some companies are responding to customer complaints about Savage, it's time to start up a Reverse Boycott List of companies that deserve our business for responding in a positive way to complaints about their advertising policies. (Okay, I need to work on a better name for the list.) Aflac and Hoover are the first two to make the list. More to follow soon.

A worthy Net Neutrality group

I received a message today from a group called The Point in a comment about my previous post on Net Neutrality, and I was intrigued. I checked out the group's Website, and it looks legit, and worthy of our time. Click on the badge at left to go to the group's Website, where you can sign up for the e-mail newsletter about Net Neutrality, among other things.

I love the spirit of this - the group's slogan, First Telecom to take the Net Neutrality pledge wins our business, is right up my alley. As wrote regarding Michael Savage's autism comments, considering how our media is dominated by corporate conglomerates, about the only power we have left is where we decide to spend our money.

I urge you to click on the badge above,  sign up for the e-mail updates, and to write your elected legislators, demanding that they stay on top of insuring the continuation of Net Neutrality.

This is a vital issue to every American, no matter which side of the political aisle your beliefs reside. Right now, we have it, but we certainly won't keep it without a fight.

"We'll do it live," McCain-style; & a word on 'Net Neutrality

I have so many serious things to get to, so I figured I would start this morning off with a laugh. It's the now infamous We'll do it live! video, starring John McCain. Considering his notorious temper, maybe this one fits more than we realize.

It's things like this that make me realize I was born in precisely the right time in history, because I enjoy all that the Internet offers so much. I love the parodies and humor, but most of all, I love the fact that politicians can no longer hide behind the fact that what they said six months ago is so difficult to look up for the average American. Arrrnt! Not with the Internet. I've written it many times, and it bears repeating - with our corporate media serving as our "free press," the 'Net is really the only thing we have left.

Thankfully, it appears that all Democrats in the U.S. Senate are very serious about preserving 'Net Neutrality. Most excellent. Please write your Democratic Senator (if you're blessed enough to have one) and tell them that you applaud their efforts. They certainly deserve our continued praise for remaining vigilant on this issue, because one thing's for sure - the media conglomerates aren't simply going to throw their collective hands in the air and give up. They will keep fighting and fighting, until they get the "tiered Internet" that they covet. We cannot and must not let that ever happen.

From Open Left:

For the last few months, we’ve been posting Democratic Senate challenger positions on net neutrality here at OpenLeft. Since we started posting, we’ve been getting in statements and positions, from blogs like Cotton Mouth and the Political Base, from the candidates themselves, and from readers who took the time to ask and send in statements. I’m happy to report that every single Democratic challenger with more than $500k in cash on hand has announced their support for net neutrality. This is a milestone for the fight for internet freedom. I included statements reacting to this news from Senator Byron Dorgan, Speaker Pelosi, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Google public policy director Alan Davidson, and Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu.

Again, please write your senators, no matter what party they belong to, and let them know that nothing short of insuring the continuation of 'Net Neutrality is acceptable, without exceptions or provisions.

h/t Crooks & Liars

200k hear Obama in Berlin

I don't know what I like more, listening to Barack Obama's truly inspiring speech in Berlin earlier today, or jealous Republicans griping and complaining about the coverage that Obama is getting. I think it's hilarious that the insipid Sen. Lindsay Graham was on TV just days ago, bragging that McCain and his fellow Republicans had "chased him to Iraq and Europe," and yet now, these same people are complaining about the world of good the trip is doing his campaign. Serves them right.

Obama's speech was a breath of fresh air to our stale, partisan politics - he really is the most charismatic political leader in my lifetime, or at the very least in my adult life. Sure, Obama is a great speech maker, but he's more than that - he's giving us hope, something that's been snuffed out in many ways during the last eight years. Many of Obama's critics love to say, "Sure, he's a great speech maker, but what is he going to do?" Well, his speeches are laying the groundwork for what he will do as president. I mean, he's a candidate for president - what's he supposed to do, invade a country?

Quite frankly, I'm not at all surprised at the reception he's received on his trip, for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest is how Bush has treated much of Europe during his presidency, especially during the run-up to the War in Iraq. Many countries, including Germany, were reluctant to go to war, but Bush had made up his mind that war was the way, and anyone who was against the war, Bush took it as a personal insult. (See France.)

It was widely reported that Bush bashed German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder when he wouldn't support the invasion of Iraq. This is one of the many miscalculations that passes for Bush foreign policy - disagreements are taken as personal slights, and immediately diplomacy goes right out the window.

It's little wonder that Europe and the Middle East are crying out for a different kind of American politician, and Obama is that man.

You can read the full text of Obama's speech Here (If you're reading this longer than a week after my original post, you will have to be a New York Times member to view it).

I was impressed not only by Obama's delivery (who isn't other than the most rabid Republican?), but also the breadth of his speech. He touched a lot of bases today in a very short amount of time.

I was heartened to hear him mention global warming, because quite frankly I haven't heard enough to date from him on the subject:

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

Great to mention it, but we need more specifics from him, and soon (But, I know Berlin wasn't the place to do it). I urge you all to write him and ask for those specifics. I will be writing his campaign a long-overdue letter shortly.

I found this particular passage inspiring, too:

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

Right on, although we can't take on these many challenges ourselves - we do need Europe's help. This particular passage is one of the many reasons I'm proud to call myself a Democrat and identify with liberalism - helping others and the least among us. Granted, we have a lot of work to do here at home, too, and New Orleans tops the list.

However, this administration hasn't done a damn thing about Darfur, other than issue a few words of condemnation. As I wrote yesterday, too bad for the people of Darfur that there isn't billions of barrels of our oil under their soil. If there were, Bush would no doubt be on TV saying, "The people of Darfur deserve freedom" and "Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir (the Sudanese President) is a brutal dictator" and blah, blah, blah. We all know the Bush boilerplate by now. Bush has blood on his hands for doing nothing, and so does America. We should have done something, just like President Clinton should have with regard to Rwanda in the mid-1990s. (Clinton has often stated that it was one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency.)

Another passage I found interesting, which was very obviously no accident in this speech:

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Also, when you watch the footage above, notice that Obama has a flag pin on his lapel, something he now wears with regularity. I don't view that as a bad thing, but I think it's disgraceful that there are mindless morons in this country who feel that you have to wear a flag to be patriotic. That point can't be repeated enough, either, because stupid rumors persist on the Internet that Obama won't say the Pledge of Allegiance (not true), hates America (Really?!?) and won't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance (also untrue, and there's video evidence to prove it).

It's a little ironic that Obama had these patriotic words to say about America in a city that once passed laws that required members of the Nazi Party to wear the sinister swastika as a sign of party loyalty. Sometimes, I feel we aren't that far away in America, when a nominee for president has his patriotism impugned for not wearing a 50¢ pin (that was probably made in China). Sickening.

Anyway, I found his speech truly inspiring, and probably one of the finest in his career. And I'm happy he didn't go too overboard with a German phrase, circa President Kennedy.

Predictably, McCain is taking great pains to downplay Obama's trip and today's speech, calling it a "premature victory lap." (Sort of like McCain's last stroll through Baghdad, where he nearly talked himself to death about the Surge and how great he thinks thing are going?) Just wondering.

Economy got you down? Gas too expensive? No worries - Let the demagoguery begin!

The people over at Talking Points Memo have put together a wonderful montage of Republican fear mongering over the last few days about Barack Obama's opinion on the Surge, which every Republican in the Western Hemisphere is huffing and puffing as a resounding success. Just wondering, where have we seen that kind of ass clownery before?

Oh yea, that. Now I remember. Amazing that most Repubes have not gotten one thing right about this war, from its length, to its cost, to who would pay for it, that we would be greeted as liberators, etc. (Do I really need to list them all?), yet now we are supposed to trust the party of foreign policy competence. Are they kidding? Sadly, no.

On a day when Obama is making a historic speech in the heart of Berlin, all the leading Republicans can do is sit back and watch, and whine that he "wasn't right about the surge." It's equivalent to a bunch of under-aged kids who are trying to get into a high school party, and no one will let them in, so they sit out in the street, screaming, while no one pays attention to them, throwing pebbles at the house.

I guess no one is showing the McCain campaign the poll numbers these days (good) that show the overwhelming majority of Americans feel that the economy is the number one issue this fall, and it's their number one concern. Sure, we all want to feel safe, but exactly how has Bush and his war mongering candidate done that? They still haven't found bin Laden, Iraq was never a threat and our homeland is still dreadfully unprepared for another attack. What's more, if you can't afford gas or your mortgage, you aren't nearly as worried about national security.

Yet, all we hear about is Iraq, Iraq, Iraq from right-wing blowhards on TV. Well, I guess when you have nothing else to run on, you have to beat the one drum you have left. And they are going to beat it HARD. One of the most under reported stories in our corporate media right now is how Karl Rove is simultaneously working for Faux News while serving as a consultant for the McCain campaign. So, many of the Rovian tactics will no doubt be dragged from the closet, dusted off and thrown into battle vs. Obama. I sure hope Obama is ready; so far, it seems like he is. He's up against it in some ways, even though he's doing well in the polls. Just wondering, are any Obama consultants working for a major network?

And, I'm sorry, but why in the world is Rudy 9iu1ian1 still on TV? Why do his opinions matter? And why isn't the media playing up his differences with John McCain (as well as Mitt Romney's) like it did and continues to do with Hillary and Obama?!? Well, it is our corporate media, so I guess I'm being all rhetorical and all.

Just because Sylvester Giuliani helped New Yorkers endure 9-11, that does not make him some sort of foreign policy expert. Far from it. Just as John McCain serving as a POW doesn't qualify him as an expert on foreign policy, or fighting wars, for that matter. I can only hope that McCain keeps repeating the absurd line, "My friends, I know how to win wars," followed by the creepy smile. Because sooner or later, someone, somewhere, is going to get the balls to say, "Exactly how is that, Senator?"