Olbermann remembers 9/11

The other night, on the eve of the 9-11 anniversary, Keith Olbermann savaged the Republicans for its treatment of and exploitation of the worst attack on our soil in modern American history. If watched it two or three times, feeling equal parts amazement that someone had the temerity to criticize the 9-11 party (a slogan so deserving of the GOP for many reasons), and also disbelief that our corporate media allows Olbermann's voice to remain on the air when he's so critical of the party of the corporate media, the GOP. When I hear Olbermann wield his rhetorical cudgel in his uniquely sardonic way, the only conclusion I can come to as to why he's allowed to say such things is that the corporate media wants to at least have the appearance of being "bipartisan"; whenever someone (and so few do) say that the media is dominated by right wing voices (which is almost completely is), Repubes can scream "Keith Olbermann!" and "Jon Stewart!" Hey, whatever - at least Olbermann is out there, and he is more pissed than ever. Thank God for him.

He was particularly sage when he took the GOP to task for trying to "own" 9-11, which is has virtually franchised to any Republican seeking higher office. I wonder if the Republican National Committee will soon begin collecting royalties whenever a GOP nominee for a federal, state, or local office invokes "9-11" against his or her Democratic opponent. It seems we aren't too far away. Anyway, here's Olbermann on the trademarking of 9-11 by the GOP:

9-11 has become a brand name, a Republican campaign slogan, propaganda of the lowest form. 9-11 has become 9-11 with a trademark logo; 9-11™ has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial or constitutional crooks in office without literally any means of visible support.

[...]

...the political party in office at the time of attacks at the local, state and national levels, the party which uniformly ignored the warnings, and the presidential administration already through 20 percent of its first term, and no longer wet behind the ears, have not only thus escaped any blame for the criminal malfeasance and neglect that allowed the attacks to occur, but that presidency and political party have managed to make it seem as if the other political party would be solely and irredeemably responsible for any similar catastrophe in the future...

He also takes some significant swipes at Rudy Giuliani, America's Profiteer, who really can't be repudiated harshly enough for his idiotic and moronic criticisms of the Democratic Party since 9-11, as well as his endlessly pimping himself as being a "brave leader" in the hours and days after 9-11. Kudos to Olbermann for mentioning that Giuliani didn't do DICK (my word) between the two World Trade Center attacks in the 1990s, during which most of the time he was mayor of New York City, and was in a position to do much. (That would include having the city's emergency response center located at the World Trade Center, which the FDNY and NYPD were vehemently opposed to, which Olbermann mentions, and also getting a working radio system that would have allowed the NYPD and FDNY to communicate to one another on the morning of 9-11; it's not a stretch to say that the appallingly bad radios that the city did have on 9-11 cost more than a few first responders their lives.)

Giuliani is literally a political caricature, a farce, a product of little more than a slick PR campaign, that couldn't even fool GOP voters into voting for him during the primaries, when he didn't win one freaking state. I read a pretty scathing indictment of him this past spring in The New Yorker, which summed up pretty nicely how most feel about him: "Those who know him best like him least." I still crack up that a few people I see during my long commute have "Rudy" stickers on their cars - I sometimes have to strongly resist the urge to tell these people that they are "number one," or to roll down my window to tell them how mind-numbingly stupid they really are.

(Giuliani Illustration brilliantly drawn by Derek Chatwood, © 2008 All Rights Reserved)

Olbermann really slammed the GOP for it's supposed 9-11 tribute film broadcast during the GOP Convention last week, chiding the powers that be in our fear mongering party for the images and footage displayed, saying:

The Republicans gave us sociological pornography; a virtual snuff film. Years ago, the television networks, to the applause of this nation, and to the relief of its mental health authorities, voluntarily stopped showing the most graphic of the images of the World Trade Center, except with the strongest of warnings. And yet the Republicans at their convention, having virtually seized control of the cable news operations, showed the worst of it...

I can't think of much more to add to that, other than to say I'm glad that Olbermann brought up how our corporate media is run by companies who have a vested interest in seeing that John McCain gets elected. This is especially true considering that Obama has publicly stated that if elected, he wants to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act, which would effectively break up the enormous media conglomerates. This rates as a pretty big mistake; they were going to fight Obama's election anyway, but he should have waited to reveal these plans until after he's elected, if he indeed wins.

One final thought - I LOVE it that Olbermann raked McCain over the coals for Mac's patently asinine pronouncement that "he knows how to catch bin Laden." Anyone who believes that comment at face value ought to be deported, at best. Olbermann hammers the point home about McCain's pledge to run a "clean campaign"; anyone but the most rabid Republican knew that was a lie when he said it - all that was needed was time to prove how dishonest it was. Well, we now have that proof.

By the way, more specifics on Olbermann's reaction to the GOP's 9-11 "tribute film" in a bit.

This picture says it all...

Lots to get to today, but before I head off to teach two classes, I thought I'd share this pretty poignant picture I found on C&L this morning, which proves that Photoshoppers the world over aren't just adept at putting aliens in family photos for fun - they are pretty effective at making some powerful political statements, too; this is the best one I've seen this year regarding 9-11. Tragically, how very true it is. More in a bit.

Remembering an awful, watershed morning

I've been thinking about 9/11 quite a bit this morning - it's hard not to, considering the media coverage of the one of the worst anniversaries in American history (and for once, the media circus is deserved).

It almost seems like decades ago when America was in a post-Cold War cocoon of prosperity and growth. There 1990s brought out the best of America and the worst of America, but more bad than good. We can honestly look back with a little more hindsight with each passing 9-11 anniversary and truly realize how asleep we really were.

Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to have a discussion about 9-11 these days without it becoming intensely political. And that trend is not helped by politicians who try to make hay out of homeland security issues, and the whole "we can protect you and they can't" ridiculousness. I'm referring to Repubes like Rudy 9iu1ian1, who never misses an opportunity to pimp 9-11 like he's participating in some sort of celebrity endorsement. John McCain is a little more subtler, but not by much; he often insinuates that American will be much less safe if Obama is elected president. It's shameful, disgusting and despicable, but that's never stopped any of them.

Some day, I really would like the whole truth about 9-11 to come out, including its causes, and who was responsible for the tragedies seven years ago. Unfortunately, there seems to be little political will to truly get to the bottom of 9-11 with a bipartisan, independently appointed commission (unlike the 9/11 Commission that was hand-picked by President Bush and his cronies in the GOP-controlled Congress).

I can't help but sit here and wonder if we ever will find Osama bin Laden. Maybe this October the Bush-controlled Pentagon will get around to finding him. No one could possibly be surprised if that happens.

Keith Olbermann had plenty to say about the 9/11 anniversary last night. More on that in a minute.

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.

Blitzer's stroll down the Blvd. of Bush Lies

I have to give Wolf Blitzer major kudos for detailing the multitude of lies of the Bush administration. Normally, I don't agree with Blitzer on a number of fronts, but this is truly a great piece of footage.

I'm not still arguing against whether we should have gone to war in Iraq by bringing up this footage; what I'm doing is offering up the merits of a foreign policy that has gone terribly wrong. And this foreign policy will largely be continued by John McCain, who thinks it's funny to make jokes about bombing Iran. We cannot and we must not continue down the path of preemptive war, unless every single diplomatic option has been exhausted. Since we aren't even talking to the Iranians right now, it's not a stretch to say that all diplomatic options have not been explored.

And the double standard between Iran and North Korea is quite telling. I can distinctly remember the Bushies all but calling the Clinton administration a bunch of pussies for negotiating with North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

Low and behold, over the weekend, I read that North Korea has been convinced to give up its nuclear program, through diplomacy, and that it will be removed from the State Department's terrorist watch list. So I guess that diplomacy only is an option when it's a country we simply don't want to invade (or can't afford to in terms of troops and money).

So much for diplomacy not being an option, and for North Korea being a member of the Axis of Evil. All accomplished through diplomacy.

My favorite parts of the video above, however, are Donald Rumsfeld's obfuscations, and Dick Cheney's combativeness when confronted with the facts by Blitzer. History will treat neither man kindly.

And Condi Rice's "mushroom cloud" statement from September 2002 now looks almost like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Wanted: GOP demagogues; 4 month temp. position, pays well

So this is the kind of rabid, revolting talk that Americans are going to be subjected to for the next 4 1/2 months - fear mongering at its worst about a would-be Obama administration. What a surprise.

Here are a few despicable examples of the many that have been broadcast over the airwaves in recent weeks. Listen to the video clip above as conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt leaves no demagogic stone unturned when talking about an Obama victory in regard to the USC/Ohio State game on Sept. 13. (Too bad the game isn't on Sept. 11 - that would have been too perfect.) An excerpt:

And none of the USC people will give up their tickets to me. I'd pay fair price. They — they know Ohio State's gonna slaughter the Trojans. They know that they're gonna slaughter the Trojans, and therefore they do not want me there at the bloodbath, since it's probably the last football game we'll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama. I — I would like to see Ohio State slaughter USC. This is what I'm living for right now.

And they said that Jerry Falwell is dead.

But wait, there's more.

John Gibson of Faux News fame recently entertained former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on his radio show. Wild comedy ensued when the two began fear mongering discussing a possible (probable) Obama Presidency. Take a listen to this claptrap...

GIBSON: The Obama team is going back to some of the old complaints about the war and the war on terror... that the left has been articulating for a long time now, and not really coming up with anything new.

BOLTON: Yeah I think honestly that's an optimistic view of it, that it will simply be a replay of the Clinton administration. It will simply have more embassy bombings, more bombings of our warships like the Cole, more World Trade Center attacks. That would be the best outcome from that perspective.

Does Bolton have any credibility at all? Did he ever as our ambassador to the UN? Many who look at his record would probably strongly conclude that he has none. My favorite Bolton bon mot - speaking about the UN in 1994, he is purported to have said, "There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States. [...] The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Quite naturally, Bush nominated him to be our UN ambassador. And Bush wonders why he couldn't get Bolton confirmed in the Senate. In fact, Bush had to use a recess appointment to get him to the UN in the first place. That one ranks right up there with appointing Michael Brown as head of FEMA, a man who had as much experience at handling natural disasters as I do.

Someone needs to give Bolton a little history lesson...

• The September 11 attacks happened on Bush's watch

• The 1993 WTC attack happened a mere 36 days after President Clinton took office

• The attack on the USS Cole happened on Oct. 12, 2000, and the FBI's final report was issued on Jan. 19, 2001. Just imagine those headlines from the right-wingnuts in the media had Clinton responded in the waning hours of his presidency: Bill Clinton retaliates for Cole attack to deflect attention from presidential pardons!!! would have screamed Faux News, etc.

• The embassy bombings? Yes, they happened on President Clinton's watch, and when the U.S. military retaliated on Aug. 20, 1998, Repubes in Congress, who were busy impeaching him for a blow job, cried that he was trying to deflect attention away from the Lewinsky witch hunt scandal.

I'm not absolving President Clinton of all blame for the terrorism that rocked U.S. locations around the world in his second term (and the first WTC attack early in his first), but to blame him for these attacks is absurd, and in the case of 9-11, utterly laughable.

The myth that Clinton did nothing to combat terrorism in the 1990s has been thoroughly debunked, so I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time on it here. All I'll add is that it's been refuted by people who were there, such as Richard Clarke and George Tenet.

My point is that trying to blame Clinton for every bad terrorist attack is absurd, but we've seen these plays called by Republicans before, most recently before the 2006 election. Let's hope they keep trotting out this cliché time and again before November. I don't think a majority of voters could possibly be naïve enough to believe it.

MoveOn ad calls McCain out on Iraq

MoveOn and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have teamed up to produce and distribute this in-your-face political ad about a mom who isn't giving her son to a hypothetical John McCain administration, if he plans to stay in Iraq for 100 years. Yes, I know he recently vowed that he would have the troops out by the end of his first term, but even that's not reassuring. Just last week, he said that bringing troops home is "not important."

I said it last week, and I'll say it again - I sure hope that members of the military, as well as their loved ones, friends and family are paying attention to all of the claptrap that's coming out of McCain's mouth about Iraq (And one really MUST pay attention, too, because it changes hourly).

MoveOn will be running the ad in several battleground states in the coming days. I think its impact will be negligible, but this ad has more than a ring of truth in it, and it hits the war-mongering McCain right where it hurts.

Do I think this will win Obama any more votes? I seriously doubt it, because an ad like this isn't going to win over voters from the other side; it will merely anger them.

However, the powers-that-be over at MoveOn have to love the exposure the ad is getting from TV talking heads. A sample:

Chuck Todd - what a fool. A "shameless" ad? I'll tell you what's shameless - sending tens of thousands of Iraqis as well as thousands of American troops to their deaths over oil in an unnecessary, pre-emptive war, all for the fucking glory of George W. Bush, and now, John S. McCain III. And this war continues because Repubes and Bush don't have the political courage to say, "Hey, we made a mistake, and now we need to bring our troops home. We need to stop this war, which is an unacceptable drain on our economy, but most importantly on the lives of our young men and women."

Yesterday, Crooks & Liars rightfully pointed out the noted LACK of an uproar over this 2004 ad that pimped Bush comforting a 9-11 victim (conveniently when the cameras were rolling):

Bush and Cheney have been exploiting 9-11 since the day it happened, and now it's "shameless" to have a mother say that she won't send her son off to fight in an insane, asinine war that is accomplishing nothing? Yea, right.

America has had enough of this war, and those who like McCain who keep perpetuating it.

Iraq, 9-11 and fear mongering might have gotten Bush his second term, but all it's given the rest of us is a soaring national debt, soldiers who are physically and mentally broken when they return home, lowered prestige in the world, and a full-blown energy crisis. A vote for McCain is a vote for more of the same, Period.

To me, the mere thought of pulling the lever for McCain is downright revolting.

TSA declares war on pierced nipples

Let the outrage begin on this one. A woman was prevented from getting on a flight because of nipple rings. Hey - don't blame me - I don't fabricate the news, I just comment on it, but this one really is stranger than fiction.

The woman's nipple ring and nipple stud kept setting of medal detectors, and when agents ran a portable metal detector over her chest, her mammary metal again set off the detectors. She then volunteered to show them to a female TSA agent in private, and was told that they would have to be removed or she would not be permitted on the flight. Unable to remove one of them, she had to use a pair of pliers.

Are you F*&%ing kidding me?

It's important to note that I am not without sympathy for TSA Agents; they have a very tough and important job, and it cannot be easy. They are under great pressure every day to be perfect, every time, all the time. Recent tests and drills reveal that in a number of airports, they are far from that. And dealing with surly passengers who have been waiting in long lines can't be a picnic, either.

I also don't fault the agents for the regulations; after all, they aren't making policy, they are merely doing what they are told. But, I DO fault TSA Agents for being, at times, obnoxious, unfriendly, and at times openly hostile to passengers. (I say this from personal experience, by the way - on multiple occasions, I've had to resist the overwhelming temptation to tell various agents to go f--- themselves. There's a way to be courteous, yet firm, but many churlish, rube TSA agents could use a refresher course in charm school.

For instance, I'm assuming that somewhere, there's a regulation(s) banning nipple metal on planes. As stupid as that is, fine (but more on that in a minute). But, for this woman to have agents laughing at her, as she's crying and upset? Talk about losing your dignity. Ever since September 11, fliers in this country have no rights, period. The prevailing attitude is "do what we say, shut up, and if you don't like it, you're not flying." And that's totally unacceptable, especially considering how much taxpayer money went toward bailing out these same airlines following 9-11 (but corporate welfare is a topic for another post).

What galls me most is the regulation(s) banning jewelry. The TSA, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, is doing a piss poor job of keeping us safe. Time and time again since 9-11, journalists routinely have been able to sneak contraband aboard planes. Call me crazy, but maybe if agents weren't busy enforcing stupid regulations like the one above and also taking my saline solution before I get on a plane. It's time for people to start calling TSA what it is - another department run amok by this administration. Of course, many talking heads in this administration (and their neocon supporters in the mass media) are always quick to puff out their chests and say, "But there hasn't been attack since 9-11."

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean we are safer. Again, statistics, studies and tests have demonstrated that critical items are getting through, time and time again. Invariably, whenever news of this is made public, people like Sean Hannity get on TV, crying and whining that these reports are "giving terrorists ideas on how to get items on planes."

It never ceases to amaze me that morons like Hannity who make their living in the media totally misunderstand the role of the free press in our society.

The pseudo-scandal of Jeremiah Wright

(Photo from The New York Times)

I'm loathe to bathe in the sewer of he said/she said stuff of the various supporters of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from the past week, but it's a pretty big issue, and I'm full of anger about it, so here goes. ...

First, presidential candidates cannot possibly be held responsible for what their various supporters say, feel and do. When some of those things happen to be idiotic, the candidates will distance themselves, and rightfully so.

I have some pretty strong opinions about the pseudo-Jeremiah Wright scandal. And YES, I'm calling it a "pseudo-scandal," dug up by the GOP's official disinformation station, Fox News, and some other networks of the so-called "liberal media." ABC News purchased many of Wright's sermons following his retirement when they were offered for sale, reportedly to look for "controversial material."

This is a stupid, transparent attempt to find dirt on Barack Obama, a powerful and popular candidate, who will likely be the Democratic presidential nominee.

First, what has Wright said that's so controversial? Plenty, and much of it I find outrageous and despicable. But not all of it.

Wright has said that Zionism has elements of "white racism," and that the 9/11 attacks were a consequence of violent American policies and proved that "people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."

Yikes. First of all, I'm sick and tired of the Antisemitism that is lobbed by the Jew haters in America and around the world, most notably by people like Louis Farrakhan, linked to Obama via Wright. Does that make Obama an Anti-Semite? Hardly.

Wright's reasoning that 9/11 is a consequence of violent American policies has more than a kernel of truth in it, but I don't feel America's policies in the past in any way justifies the attacks. No way. It does, however, partially explain them. Of course, this is unfashionable to say, especially in the eyes of many neocons, who are wrapped, packaged, draped and cloaked in belligerent patriotism.

Recently on CNN, the bloated, gambling addict William Bennett, a GOP talking head, was visibly miffed when someone (Michelle Obama) insinuated that America isn't the greatest country in the world. "It is," harrumphed Bennett. I'm so tired of that empty statement, and I'm even more tired of people accusing someone who won't go along with it of being unpatriotic. There are many things I don't like about America, and if you don't like that or think I'm unpatriotic, then I've got some suggestions about where you can go and how to get there.

Many African-American churches are pretty angry at how blacks have been treated in this country for, oh, about 300 years. Even a blind man can see that African-Americans still suffer some social injustices and have disadvantages in this country. Sure, some progress has been made, but we still have a long way to go. Our country has a long, painful history of racism and sexism - since our country's founding, Native-Americans, women and African-Americans all have plenty of stories to tell over three centuries of being mistreated, discriminated against and even murdered. Because I'm pointing out the obvious doesn't mean that I hate America, despite what some who disagree with me would undoubtedly say.

Sure, Wright has said some stupid things, no doubt designed to stir up his audience into a frenzy. Obama has publicly condemned those comments.

From a April 30, 2007 article in The New York Times (Subscription Required to access NYT archives):

"The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," [Obama] said in a recent interview. He was not at Trinity the day Mr. Wright delivered his remarks shortly after the attacks, Mr. Obama said, but "it sounds like he was trying to be provocative."

"Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr. Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality."

Despite the canceled invocation, Mr. Wright prayed with the Obama family just before his presidential announcement. Asked later about the incident, the Obama campaign said in a statement, "Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church."

Does that disqualify Obama to be president? Surely it does not. The last time I checked, you can be proud of someone and have a relationship with someone without agreeing with everything that person says or does. But, as far as the neocons are concerned, this isn't possible if you're a presidential candidate. (Click the above link - I blogged about this yesterday - while I was growing up, the pastor of my church had some personal issues, but that doesn't mean he's a bad person or that I wouldn't associate with him today. But, that doesn't mean I think adultery is acceptable, either.)

For instance, I'm proud of the fact that I voted for Bill Clinton twice, in 1992 and in 1996. Am I proud of the fact that he had an adulterous affair with Monica Lewinsky and lied about it? Of course not. But, does the fact that I voted for Clinton, and that I am to this day, an admirer of his make me a believer in adultery? Please. Am I proud that I twice voted for him? You're damn right I am. Hopefully, you see how stupid this argument quickly becomes upon reasoned analysis.

Speaking of analysis, let's do a little of it that you won't see on Faux News (or probably another other network, for that matter). Are Wright's comments any more offensive than some of the radical religious right's comments following 9/11? Specifically on September 13, 2001? Well, let's listen to them, shall we? ...

Both Jerry Falwell's and Pat Robertson's comments are despicable, outrageous, inexcusable and yes, unforgivable. Of course, the next day a contrite Falwell apologized, but I think few took that apology sincerely, considering his track record of repeatedly spewing intolerant stuff like this and then subsequently apologizing when enough people were angry. I hope Falwell, rest in peace, is keeping Timothy McVeigh company.

How is any of this relevant to the Wright pseudo-controversy? You tell me...

In 2000, McCain rightfully called Falwell and those like him "agents of intolerance," but the 2007 version of McCain (when the picture above was taken) will pander and do anything to become president.

If Obama (or Hillary) is smart, during the fall campaign, if Fox and the right wing noise machine keeps up with the Jeremiah Wright propaganda, the picture above ought to be used extensively in political ads, along with the video of Falwell and that idiotic rube Robertson offering up their 9/11 blame games.

Anyway, does McCain's public embrace of Falwell disqualify him to be president? Nope - no more than Wright's comments disqualify Obama, and they don't.

Is there any chance that we could get back to the issues that are affecting tens of millions of Americans any time soon? That would really be nice.

In addition to the War in Iraq, where American deaths are now on the brink of 4,000, we have a mounting debt, an impending economic crisis, and a million other problems that are getting zero play in the press. More on what issues I consider important in a bit.

If anything, both the Obama and Clinton campaigns have not been nearly forceful or timely enough to distance themselves from the stupid remarks of their supporters. Hopefully, these are lessons that are learned and applied to the fall campaign, because one thing's for sure - if it's this ugly now, it's going to be infinitely uglier in the summer and fall.

It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

The outrage of FDNY radios on 9-11

This is a pretty damning video about Rudy Giuliani's outrageous inaction and foot dragging about the well-documented problems with the New York Fire Department's radio equipment during his tenure as mayor. The city knew about the problems with the radio equipment as early as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. America's Profiteer became mayor 11 months after the '93 attack, and he had nearly eight years to fix this problem. The Giuliani administration failed to do so.

The radios were ordered in the spring of 2001 in a no-bid contract to Motorola. Where have we heard of no-bid contracts before? Oh yea - the Bush administration. Under Bush's watch, no-bid contracts have become as common as the sun rising and setting.

It's beyond contempt that Rudy Giuliani was brazen enough to publicly say these words (in the video above):

Their willingness [New York City Firefighters], the way I describe it, to stand their ground, and not retreat, the fact that so many of them interpreted it that way, kept a much calmer situation...

Family members of deceased FDNY firefighters and firefighters themselves can be heard shouting "No!" in the back of the room, and rightfully so, for so many reasons.

First of all, how does Rudy know how the firefighters who lost their lives interpreted the orders of their commanders, or if they even heard them? Based on the problems with these same radios in 1993, the likelihood that firefighters did hear the order to evacuate is very unlikely. And it's just patently absurd for Giuliani to insinuate that the firefighters willfully ignored the order to evacuate to twin towers out of bravery. That's just cover for his administration's screw up for inexcusably not fixing the problem that the FDNY had faulty, wonky radios. Put another way, would the firefighters have been viewed as cowards if they had high-tailed it out of the twin towers if they had heard the order to evacuate? Of course not. Giuliani's idiotic reasoning simply makes no sense.

I really do hope that America wakes up and quits buying into the myth that Giuliani was a spectacular leader up to, before and after 9-11. It just isn't going to hold up.

So, why does all this matter? I've written it before and I'll write it probably dozens of more times before the '08 election (or until Giuliani is defeated): if he's going to run as the 9-11 Candidate, his decisions, before, during and immediately after 9-11 until the end of his term as New York City's mayor bear scrutiny. When that scrutiny comes, much of the Giuliani mystique of being a great leader with the golden touch is going to lose much of its luster.

Notice the people in this video are family members of firefighters who died, or former leaders of the FDNY. Once the primaries draw nigh, I wonder how long it will take the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin and the rest of the intolerant right wing cabal attack the people in this video? It's not a question of if, but a question of when.

And that's nearly as much of an outrage as the radios themselves that New York City firefighters were stuck with on the morning of September 11.

Go Here to sign the petition to demand that this issue be investigated by New York City Council. And find more videos that are breaking down the Giuliani myth at The Real Rudy. I'll be featuring and discussing many more of that sites videos here in the months to come.

Dick's dark view on presidential powers

Last week, PBS Frontline aired a special that is getting plenty of attention and discussion called Cheney's Law. Above is a pretty damning clip about the administration's use of Signing Statements, which is the Bush administration's method of sticking up its collective middle finger at Congress and the American people. Never before in my lifetime do I remember a president telling Congress that it will do what it wants. Even more damning is the press's willingness to under report this ominous, unchecked increase in presidential power.

It's no secret that the old guard Republicans, most notably Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, were out to dramatically increase presidential power, even before 9-11. But, September 11 offered this administration the perfect opportunity (Read: Excuse) to do just that. Don and Dick were right in the middle of the Ford administration after the fall and resignation of President Nixon. After Watergate, the American public demanded, and Congress enacted, laws that reduced presidential powers.

This was inexcusable in the eyes of neocons Wolfowitz, Dick and Don. So far, the feckless Democratically controlled Congress and the press have done precious little about Bush's blatant, arrogant power grab, which has again created an imperial presidency of sorts.

Bush's use of signing statements alone, which openly flout laws that he has signed, should alone be an impeachable offense. (And there are many others.) If the Democratic party had any backbone whatsoever, which it has demonstrated on a daily basis it does not have, it would have put a stop to Bush's flagrant, lawbreaking presidency. Sigh.

All we can do is watch and wait. Only 457 days to go until we again have a legitimate president.

You can watch the entire PBS series, Cheney's Law, Here. I plan on watching it as soon as I can, and when I do I'll write my thoughts.

Aug. 6 is truly a dark day in history

Sixty-two years ago today, our country unleashed the most lethal killing device known to man at the time - the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I have to admit that I get annoyed whenever the anniversary rolls around, and the history revisionists simply claim, "We should not have dropped the bomb." It's a debate that will undoubtedly outlive me if I live to be 100.

What people forget is that it's very hard to recreate the atmosphere and thinking that existed at the time. To me, all discussion on that time and that war should keep that in mind. Unless you lived it, and fewer and fewer of the people who actually did are with us to bear witness, I believe it's more difficult to accurately convey what World War II was like. The Japanese attacked us, and brought war to our shores. Even worse, they were going to fight to the death had we invaded their homeland.

People seem to forget perspective on the war, however. We killed more people during the firebombing of Tokyo and the bombing of Dresden, but that hardly ever gets any mention, because the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was accomplished with one bomb. In the end, while both events were tragedies for the people of Japan, I believe they both saved many lives on both sides, and ultimately they helped bring to an end a brutal war that killed over 30 million people.

August 6 is also infamous for another reason - this is the date, six years ago, that President Bush received his Presidential Daily Briefing while on vacation in Crawford, Texas "ranch" entitled, "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Were the plans for 9-11 too far along to have been thwarted, even if Bush had taken steps to prevent it? We'll never know, but what we do know is that the president did. ... Nothing.

I just finished reading two books that deal in part with 9-11 specifically and what the intelligence community knew prior to 9-11. It's sad and tragic that we had the raw data that could have thwarted the attacks, yet our intelligence community was too slow, unresponsive and unprepared to effectively deal with the threat.

Of course, I don't place blame for all of these problems squarely on Bush's shoulders, either. That would be myopic and partisan; the intelligence community had atrophied for years if not decades.

What I blame Bush for was again, doing nothing.

We really won't forget.

Bottom photo via Mock, Paper, Scissors

Stupidity not limited to Earthlings

The Weekly World News has silenced its presses. The fantasy paper has announced that it will no longer publish a physical issue; it will just maintain a Website, and that's it.

Above, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush holds up an issue of the WWN in this May 3, 2000 AP file photo. Apparently, aliens in outer space have only managed to tap into Fox News satellites. However, this could be a positive - maybe they'll think that Earth isn't even worth invading if that's all they've looked at.

On a much brighter note, I can never look at pictures from the 2000 campaign without pondering what America would be like today had the Supreme Court not crowned King George president in the fall of 2000. It's likely 9-11 would have still happened; the planning was too far along at that point, and our intelligence agencies too hamstrung, but the War in Iraq? It almost certainly never would have happened.

But, there's no use pining about what might have been, because it doesn't change a thing, because when the fantasizing is over, I still find myself living in a country being "led" by George W. Bush. Less than 545 days to go.

AP Photo/Eric Draper, file

Manhattan steam blast footage

Check out this crazy footage from Manhattan yesterday, when a steam pipe burst on a city street. The blast killed one person, injured scores of others, and swallowed one tow truck.

Yesterday's incident, which has been ruled an accident that had no connection to terrorism, underscores just how jittery New Yorkers are, almost six years after 9-11. I can't say that I blame them.

I read on the news that the blast reached higher than the Chrysler Building, one of the tallest buildings in New York City. A few minutes into this footage, you can see evidence of that for yourself - the Chrysler Building is in the background, and in the foreground is steam blowing hundreds of feet into the air.

I'm surprised Rudy Giuliani didn't arrive on the scene and blame the whole accident on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. I guess that's what happens when you play "defense" instead of "offense" - steam lines blow up, right, America's Mayor?

Most troubling of all is what I heard on the news this morning - that asbestos, a known carcinogen, was found in the dust after it settled from the blast. Asbestos was used for many years to insulate steam pipes (and many other types of pipes) because it is very effective against heat and fire.

Yet, this morning, it was all over the television - "the air is safe to breathe," bellowed the willing sheeple who "report" the news on TV. Really? A frickin' chimpanzee could figure out that if there's an explosion, and later asbestos is found in the dust from that explosion, that there may be air problems.

Hearing this on the news this morning reminded me of 9-11, when Giuliani was on TV almost immediately declaring, "the air is safe" around Ground Zero, even though fires were still burning. At least one death has officially been ruled as a direct result of the air at Ground Zero, and hundreds more have filed claims.

I'm convinced that our government would lie and tell us just about anything to prevent panic, even when panic might be justified. I swear, a nuclear bomb could detonate in an American city, and Bush would be on TV telling everyone that the radiation is "acceptable." (I know, I'm stretching the analogy here - anything nuclear being detonated anywhere in the U.S. is too horrible to even contemplate, but the public really should be discussing this more.)

Honestly, as incompetent as this administration is, when you think about it, is the above scenario really out of the question though? (And by that I mean both the lying and the new terrorist act.) Part of me believes that this administration would knowingly let another attack happen, especially if it happened conveniently next year, to keep everyone afraid and to keep the old people votin' Republican. I don't think they'd let a nuclear anything happen, but anything short of that, it's not out of the question.

Think I'm reaching? Think again. Hey, Bush has sacrificed thousands of American lives in Iraq to stay in power, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And yet, just about every election, there are those far-right conservatives who will vote Republican no matter what, all because of God, Gays and Guns. And that's Demented, Demoralizing and Despicable.

Video via C&L

FDNY stokes Rudy ire fire

This is a pretty damning video by the national firefighters union, the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), about Rudy Giuliani and his "leadership" before, during and after 9-11. It's too early to tell whether it will have any political ramifications, but if anything, it must be pretty embarrassing to a man who could turn a Girl Scout cookie sale into a lesson about 9-11.

"The urban legend of America's Mayor need to be balanced by truth," a line uttered pretty early on in this video, is perhaps the best single sentence I've heard yet about Giuliani, who really has profited monetarily from 9-11 more than the any other individual, by far. (Of course, the award for who has profited politically the most from 9-11 is the most obvious of all - President Bush.)

It's pretty amazing that I hear Giuliani on television now never missing an opportunity to slam Democrats, particularly the Clinton administration, for the 1990s and how poorly prepared we were for 9-11. I've been writing for months that Giuliani's preparation in NYC for an attack following the 1993 WTC attack deserves closer scrutiny. I'm glad the firefighters union is stepping up efforts to inform an American public that has been snowed over by the mayor's slick, expensive PR effort to paint him as an American hero.

I find two allegations by the IAFF particularly disturbing: the pathetic radios that the Giuliani administration authorized the purchase and use of by FDNY without testing, and Giuliani's brilliant decision to locate his crisis command center at World Trade, despite the 1993 attack.

The radio controversy is particular damning - it's not like the city didn't have years to fix the problem -- 8 1/2 years elapsed between the World Trade Center attacks. And why a no-bid contract for the radios? Someone got paid, that's for sure. Why would I not be surprised if that someone is the mayor himself? It's not a stretch to say (and several firefighters do in the video above) that the pathetically inadequate radios the firefighters were equipped with cost dozens and dozens of firefighters their lives on 9-11.

Locating the command center at the World Trade Center is so utterly idiotic of a decision that it almost defies description. Just imagine if Japan was discovered to have sabotaged the U.S. Navy's base at Pearl Harbor in 1939, and Roosevelt insisted that the entire Atlantic fleet should still be located at Pearl? Then, boom - December 7, 1941. That's pretty much what Giuliani did in New York City - he decided to locate his crisis command center at the one place in NYC with the biggest bulls eye - the World Trade Center. I suppose he deserves credit for not putting the command center at the top of the Empire State Building, or on the 101st floor of the North Tower.

With stupid, ill-advised decisions like these, perhaps Giuliani could be described as a bald George W. Bush. Yea, just what we need - four (or, GASP! EIGHT!) more years of decision making like we've had to endure since 1.20.01.

Some will inevitably ask: "What does all of this have to do with Giuliani running for president?" Plenty. If the mayor of America's largest city makes idiotic decisions like this, what would he do as president?

Another potential Repube counter-attack will predictably go something like this:

Democrats complained about the supposed Swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004, but now they are gleefully cheering the IAFF slamming Rudy Giuliani in this election season. What about this hypocrisy, Ann Coulter?

Wow, that was pretty good - I wonder if Karl Rove is hiring? Seriously though, how hard is it to envision Sean Insanity or Bill O'Lielly blabbering the above lines on their respective shows, and the sheeple who listen to them sopping it up on a plate with a biscuit?

This is not similar to Kerry's '04 Swiftboating, which was a despicable attack funded by far right financiers. This is the firefighters union, which Giuliani has pimped himself as being a champion of, slamming him for his decisions during 9-11 and for his lack of adequate preparation in the wake of the 1993 attacks.

The fallout from this will be the most interesting of all. Hopefully the 2008 Democratic candidates for president are storing this Giuliani stuff away; if the mayor receives the GOP nomination, fire away.

I still maintain my belief that Giuliani will not even receive the nomination, however. For once, I'm cheer leading the far fright right - he's moderate on a number of things that make him completely unacceptable to hardcore conservatives.

Bravo.

Dennis Miller: unfunny GOP hack

When I think about the 2008 election and all of its implications, my biggest worry about the Democrats' seemingly bottomless capacity to shoot themselves in the foot can be summed up in two words: Harry Reid.

What a disaster Reid has been for the Democrats, who surely must be ruing the day that they ever elected him to be Senate Majority Leader. Sitting through a session of the U.S. Senate with the current leadership must be a lot like sitting through a student council meeting in junior high - lots of complaining, but nothing gets done.

Having said that, nobody screws up a valid political point like Dennis Miller. Is there anyone less funny than Dennis Miller right now? He appears weekly on Fersatz News' Half Hour News Hour to deliver a 2-3 minute rant. Unlike his former HBO show, Dennis Miller Live, Half Hour is the worst bore in the history of television. As I've previously written, it's so bad I hope Fox sticks with it. By the way, has a show ever been more appropriately named than this one? After watching two episodes in their entirety (cue canned applause track, just like the show), my first thought was, "What a great name - this show sucked so bad, the half hour really did feel like an hour."

Anyway, Miller's rants aren't like his old rants on his HBO show, where he's start off with, "Now I don't want to get off on a rant here..." These are much worse than that. For instance, in the clip above, it takes Miller nearly two-and-a-half minutes to say what I can say in five seconds:

Harry Reid is an incompetent pussy.

Instead, Miller takes us through a verbal tour of his dictionary, thesaurus and laundry list of non sequiturs. Just awful. But, I'm not surprised - only a hack like Miller could screw up what should have been his dream job - color commentary on Monday Night Football. In a 2006 ESPN SportsCenter poll, Miller was once voted the worst color commentator in MNF history. No doubt only because he beat out Rush Limbaugh for the job in 2000.

What's more, you know that Miller sucked when conservative blogs were flogging his Reid rant as "the most devastating take-down in political history." Maybe to people with an attention span of three months. I can think of many more that were better.

Right off the top of my head comes then-vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, famously telling Dan Quayle, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

An even better one is from a recent issue of Rolling Stone, when my favorite Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, gets gangsta slapped in a piece by Matt Taibbi entitled Giuliani: Worse than Bush. An excerpt:

Rudy Giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days — like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.

. . .

Like Bush's, Rudy's career before the bombing was in the toilet; New Yorkers had come to think of him as an ambition-sick meanie whose personal scandals were truly wearying to think about. But on the day of the attack, it must be admitted, Rudy hit the perfect note; he displayed all the strength and reassuring calm that Bush did not, and for one day at least, he was everything you'd want in a leader. Then he woke up the next day and the opportunist in him saw that there was money to be made in an America high on fear.

For starters, Rudy tried to use the tragedy to shred election rules, pushing to postpone the inauguration of his successor so he could hog the limelight for a few more months. Then, with the dust from the World Trade Center barely settled, he went on the road as the Man With the Bullhorn, pocketing as much as $200,000 for a single speaking engagement. In 2002 he reported $8 million in speaking income; this past year it was more than $11 million. He’s traveled in style, at one stop last year requesting a $47,000 flight on a private jet, five hotel rooms and a private suite with a balcony view and a king-size bed.

While the mayor himself flew out of New York on a magic carpet, thousands of cash-strapped cops, firemen and city workers involved with the cleanup at the World Trade Center were developing cancers and infections and mysterious respiratory ailments like the "WTC cough." This is the dirty little secret lurking underneath Rudy's 9/11 hero image — the most egregious example of his willingness to shape public policy to suit his donors. While the cleanup effort at the Pentagon was turned over to federal agencies like OSHA, which quickly sealed off the site and required relief workers to wear hazmat [sic] suits, the World Trade Center cleanup was handed over to Giuliani. The city's Department of Design and Construction (DDC) promptly farmed out the waste-clearing effort to a smattering of politically connected companies, including Bechtel, Bovis and AMEC construction.

. . .

Did Giuliani know the air at the World Trade Center was poison? Who knows — but we do know he took over the cleanup, refusing to let more experienced federal agencies run the show. He stood on a few brick piles on the day of the bombing, then spent the next ten months making damn sure everyone worked the night shift on-site while he bonked his mistress and negotiated his gazillion-dollar move to the private sector. Meanwhile, the people who actually cleaned up the rubble got used to checking their stool for blood every morning.

Now Giuliani is running for president — as the hero of 9/11. George Bush has balls, too, but even he has to bow to this motherfucker.

Now that's what I call a Dan Gable-like political take down.

In fact, it's the best beat down of Giuliani I've read yet. And, most incoveniently for America's Mayor, it's true.

Anyway, back to my original point: Dennis Miller is a talentless hack who can't hold down a steady job in TV on any network besides Fox Noise Channel. He's like Sean Hannity with jokes. Now THAT'S funny.

Hmm. That took about 15 seconds, and not one esoteric reference.

Miller's right about one thing, though - Harry Reid is a pussy. He just doesn't need to take so long to say it in his stupid and humorless way.

Rudy's oversimplifications & distortions are a tour de force following GOP debate

I've been meaning to get to this one, and before it's too after-the-fact, I have to mention it. After watching the Republican debate on Tuesday night, I left CNN on to listen to some of the post-debate interviews.

I was paying attention half-heartedly until Rudy Giuliani came on with Larry King. He immediately started dropping some whoppers. Here's an excerpt of his interview with King:

GIULIANI: If we have confusion about who is in the United States [referring to the immigration bill], then these situations like we've had in New Jersey, like the situation we had in Fort Dix with the attacks that take place - we're after September 11 now. And if this bill is going to be worth all the compromising that's necessary, it has to achieve a complete database of the people who are in this country.

KING: I think of all the candidates, you were the one attacking the Democrats the most, mentioning by name the debate of two nights ago.

Are you running already?

GIULIANI: Well, you know, I'm running against the...

KING: Have you got the nomination?

GIULIANI: I'm not running against the people on that stage. I mean we have some...

KING: Well, you are.

GIULIANI: Well, I'm not really. I have some disagreements with them, but largely, I hear things that I agree with. I mean, a lot of the things Senator McCain said, I agree with. Mitt Romney, at least three or four times, said, "I agree with Mayor Giuliani."

I probably disagreed with him most of the time.

My disagreements with are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards. John Edwards saying that the war on terror was just a bumper sticker, and not even amending that after this plot in New York was uncovered to attack Kennedy Airport.

It's not a bumper sticker. It is a real war. And whatever you think about Iraq, it's bigger than Iraq.

These people want to come here and kill us...

Unbelievable - it was predictable as the day is long that as soon as Edwards said that the War on Terror is simply a bumper-sticker slogan, his statement would be distorted and maligned by hawkish Republicans (with a nod to Ron Paul).

Here is what John Edwards said during the June 3 Democratic Debate:

I reject this bumper sticker, Wolf. And that's exactly what it is. It's a bumper sticker.

As president of the United States, I will do absolutely everything to find terrorists where they are, to stop them before they can do harm to us, before they can do harm to America or to its allies.

Every tool available - military alliances, intelligence - I will use.

But what this global war on terror bumper sticker - political slogan, that's all it is, all it's ever been - was intended to do was for George Bush to use it to justify everything he does: the ongoing War in Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, spying on Americans, torture.

None of those things are OK. They are not the United States of America.

But, people like Rudy Giuliani and Bill O'Reilly have done nothing but distort and take out of context what Edwards said. And Rudy was right on message on Tuesday night. I should point out that Giuliani has appeared on Billy's show on numerous occasions, so people who want to paint BOR as someone out of the Republican mainstream need a reality check. (More on O'Reilly's Edwards distortions in a later post. Back to the Giuliani/King interview:

GIULIANI: I think the Democrats want to put us in reverse to the 1990s. All I heard on that stage two nights ago was to go back to the 1990s. The 1990s - when our taxes were 24, 25 percent higher. [No Rudy, when YOUR taxes were 24-25 percent higher, and any other millionaire - PECAD] The 1990s - when we weren't recognizing the Islamic threat against us, when they attacked the USS Cole and we didn't retaliate. We didn't do anything about it.

They attacked us in 1993. We had a criminal justice response, not a response commensurate with a terrorist threat.

KING: But we only have a minute left.

You will agree Iraq is the gorilla in the room, though?

GIULIANI: Iraq is...

KING: You can't escape Iraq.

GIULIANI: Iraq is very, very important. But how you deal with it is going to say a lot about how we deal with this terrorist threat. And to give the enemy a timetable of our retreat - when in the history of war has any army ever been required to do that? And that's why I think the Democrats are in denial.

So, if Giuliani is elected president, we can expect more of the same in Iraq? I'm wondering how the American public feels about that. Recent polls show that more than 2/3 of America disagrees with his position.

I also got a kick out of Rudy saying he's not running against the people on the stage with him, his fellow GOP presidential hopefuls. That's pretty arrogant. Polls right now show him in the lead, but I've also read that his lead is shrinking. Right now, he IS running against other GOP candidates, whether he likes it or not. Of course, every GOP candidate has to state what how his views differ from Democrats as well as fellow GOP candidates, but Giuliani seems to be simply dismissing the other candidates. That's no surprise - the arrogant candidate acting arrogant.

What outraged me most about his King interview was his vast, Reagan-like oversimplification of terrorism.

First of all, history shows that it was the BUSH administration that did not retaliate for the USS Cole bombing, not the Clinton administration. I've done some reading on this - Giuliani acts like we immediately knew who attacked the Cole and that we had airtight proof. That's simply not true.

From the 9-11 Commission:

Evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement was inconclusive for months after the attack. The staff of the 9-11 Commission found that al-Qaeda's direction of the bombing was under investigation but "increasingly clear" on November 11, 2000. It was an "unproven assumption" in late November. By December 21 the CIA had made a "preliminary judgment" that "al-Qaeda appeared to have supported the attack," with no "definitive conclusion."

Giuliani's also way out of bounds for deriding the Clinton administration for its "criminal justice response, not a response commensurate with a terrorist threat."

That's flat-out b.s. First of all, we caught who was responsible for the 1993 attacks. Following the '93 World Trade Center attack, ATF bomb technicians found the axle in the bomb crater with the VIN of the Ryder truck that carried the explosives. The ATF discovered the vehicle had been rented by a Palestinian named Mohammad Salameh.

On March 4, 1993 authorities announced the capture of Salameh. In March 1994, Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj were each convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the World Trade Center bombing.

In a sweep the same day, Salameh's arrest led to the apartment of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Jersey City, New Jersey, which Yasin was sharing with his mother, in the same building as Ramzi Yousef's apartment. Yasin was taken to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, and was then released. (Great, but that's Clinton's fault? Try the FBI.) The next day, he flew back to Iraq, via Amman, Jordan. Yasin was later indicted for the attack, and in 2001 he was placed on the initial list of the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, on which he remains a fugitive today. He disappeared prior to 2003's U.S. coalition invasion in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The capture of Salameh and Yasin led authorities to Ramzi Yousef's apartment, where they found bomb-making materials and a business card from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Khalifa was arrested in relation to the crime on December 14, 1994, and was deported to Jordan by the INS on May 5, 1995. He was acquitted by a Jordanian court and lives as a free man in Saudi Arabia. Yea, the same Saudi Arabia that has such a cozy relationship with the Bush administration. The same Saudi Arabia that is responsible for 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers. The same Bush administration that Rudy has functioned as a PR flak for since 9-11.

The 1990s also shows that the Clinton administration also prevented a number of intended attacks in the United States. Funny how those foiled plots never got very much press though. That's a 180 compared to today, when an FBI agent finding a scrap of paper on the street is heralded as "foiling a major terrorist plot." Anyone who needs great examples of that - the recent Fort Dix and JFK "terrorist plots."

Of course, since 9-11 is Rudy's "franchise" and because he's from New York, he's going to milk those two instances for all they are worth. Never mind the fact that he was mayor of New York City for almost all of the 1990s (and mayor during the entire time between the WTC terrorist attacks). I've read lots about how his arrogance and lack of preparation of the city made the immediate aftermath of 9-11 worse, not better. (I'm reading some books about this soon, and I'll blog more at length about it.)

Giuliani is beyond contempt - a man who has profited and made millions of of 9-11. Whoops - another inconvenient truth about American's Mayor that receives next to no press from our liberal media.

JFK Airport plot convenient excuse for W to crank up the PR machine

My first thought when I heard about the FBI's sting operation that uncovered the plot to blow up JFK International Airport and surrounding neighborhoods was, "thank God the FBI caught them." However, my second thought was, "I wonder if this is being milked by an administration that never misses an opportunity to remind us how safe it's keeping the country."

To me, that's a pretty pathetic thought for any American citizen to have, yet that's how cynical I've become in the face of the Bush administration's relentless PR and marketing effort to force feed their image as the Party That Can Keep Us the Safest. I'd invite anyone who thinks that's cynical to look up various quotations by Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani from this year alone - the evidence is easy to find. (You can find lots of it in CMB's archives.)

Of course, the media didn't miss an opportunity to hype the living daylights out of this story over the weekend, either. Don't get me wrong - of course it's a big story, and the media has a responsibility to cover it, and cover it well. But, the media never ceases to amaze me when something like this is uncovered. Just like the plot to attack Fort Dix last month - you would have thought that nothing else was happening in the world, at all.

Ever since 9-11, I just get the feeling that the media has overtly complied with the Bush administration's wishes to scare the living daylights out of us. History shows that a frightened public is a compliant public. Since the 9-11 attacks, there are examples too numerous to mention of this administration's taking advantage of our fears. The USA Patriot Act is probably the best example.

The FBI infiltrated the suspected Muslim terrorist cell that plotted to blow up the airport, its fuel tanks and a jet fuel artery, arresting three men, one of them a former member of Guyana's parliament. A fourth man is still being sought in Trinidad as part of the plot that authorities said they had been tracking for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages.

Again, bravo to the FBI for a job well done (I really mean that), but this whole incident raises the question - how safe are we, really? Our ports, nuclear plants, food and water supply and many other areas are still wide open, all because of the War in Iraq. This administration has gotten way with homeland security on the cheap. I sure hope our luck continues, but Homeland Security shouldn't be left to chance with luck. Above, fuel tanks are seen at JFK International Airport in New York Sunday, June 3, 2007. I know that there's a great deal that I don't know about security at airports, but just from what I've seen from doing what little air travel I have done in the past few years, our security measures could use a great deal of improvement.

Above, yesterday an approaching aircraft flies overhead past a marker indicating the route of the jet fuel pipeline supplying JFK airport near 157 Ave. and 99th St. in the residential neighborhood of Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y. The lengthy pipeline was installed decades ago to replace barge deliveries of jet fuel. Should it be this easy for a would-be terrorist to identify and find a major jet fuel pipeline? Just a thought.

And one more thought - I did some reading about the plot that the FBI uncovered, and it seems that the terrorists had a difficult time acquiring explosives to do the job. Really? How hard is it to get explosives in America? Not that hard. Timothy McVeigh didn't find it very hard, and neither did the people who perpetrated the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Either the media (and really, the FBI and this administration) are all blowing this threat way out of proportion (anything think that's far-fetched?), or these four terrorists are the dumbest people walking the planet. Or, it could be a combination of the two.

My point in all of this is that my feelings are yet another indication to me about how far this administration's credibility has fallen - it's to the point now that any report about terrorism or the War on Terrorism can and should be viewed with skepticism before being believed.

I'll feel much more safe, and a whole lot more trusting of our government, when Bush is out of office.

Top photo, Reuters
Second and third photos by David Karp, AP
Bottom photo by Rick Maiman, AP

Is Rudy to blame for 9-11 air-quality death?

This is an amazing piece of footage. In the same breath, America's Mayor tells reporters that there is "no chemical agent that we have to be worried about, at this point," right after telling reporters that workers are experiencing "burning eyes" from all of the dust and smoke. I'm no scientist, but even I know if people were having nasty problems with their eyes, it sure as hell wasn't going to do their lungs any good.

I must have missed "health department expert" on Rudy's résumé.

This footage is notable because this past week, the medical examiner's office in New York City announced that it will add Felicia Dunn-Jones to the official list of victims from the September 11 attacks, nearly six years after the twin towers fell.

From Independent:

Almost six years after terrorists tore a hole in Lower Manhattan, the medical examiner's office has stirred controversy by determining that a woman who died months later from a rare lung disease after inhaling toxic dust from the collapsing Twin Towers will be added to the official list of victims.

Felicia Dunn-Jones, a civil rights lawyer, worked in a building a block from the World Trade Centre and inhaled pulverised particles of cement, glass, lead and asbestos as she fled the area of destruction on September 11 2001. Within a few weeks she developed a cough and died in February 2002.

A spokeswoman for the office, Ellen Borakove, said the case of Ms Dunn-Jones was the only 9/11-related fatality it had formally been asked to review, and the only one definitely linked to the collapse of the towers, but indicated others might be considered. "We certainly never turn anybody down," she said.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the media had better not give Giuliani a pass on his 9-11 record and decisions as the primary race heats up, and especially if he wins the Republican nomination (which I highly doubt).

I predict that he WILL get a pass, though. It's just not patriotic to question America's Mayor about 9-11. He did it heroically, competently and without making any mistakes. Take this one to the bank - 9-11 is Rudy's "franchise," and the right-wing media will attack anyone with the audacity to question Rudy's 9-11 activities and decisions.

It's a kick to see the disgraced Bernie Kerik (and best buddy of Giuliani's) in the footage. Even though Kerik and Giuliani have long, historical ties, Rudy's been trying to distance himself from Kerik for months. I think Gary Condit has a more credible reputation than Kerik.

H/T to C&L

There's hope after all for amnesic GOPers

This is one of the better parodies I've seen this year - I got a big kick out of it. It's the Ronald Reagan defense - "I can't/don't remember." (Although Reagan most famously said "recall.")

Bin Laden should have been in this commercial, too, because Bush and his cabal sure as hell don't remember (don't want to remember) that HE and his organization are responsible for 9-11, not Saddam Hussein.