Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Sorry for the inactivity on here as of late - it's been a very busy and tough 2009 thus far, but I will be back at it soon. I have been keeping up with the issues lately, though, so I have plenty to write about in the coming days.

Just wanted to post a tribute and thanks to all of our vets and troops, for all they do and have done. I sure am one lucky guy - this American has plenty to be thankful for, without question, and today, I'd like to thank those past and present in our armed forces. While I don't always agree with their use and deployment, specifically in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, that doesn't mean I'm not thankful for their service.

Unfortunately, I strongly feel that the country isn't doing all it can and should do for our returning troops, especially those who are wounded mentally and physically. I'll have more on that soon - I saw a story on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday that had me hopeful, saddened and angered - it was about our troops who have been wounded and severely burned by IEDs in Iraq. But, more on that a bit later.

TMW chronicles stupidity in the USA

[Click the image to go to full comic]

The latest TMW takes a not-so-pleasant walk down memory lane in regard to how people were willing, weak-kneed robots since 9-11.

Tom Tomorrow offers up another save, implicit criticism of our Democratically controlled Congress, which for reasons I cannot comprehend, is unwilling to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for all they have wrought on America. I will go to my grave believing that were it not for the polarization and politicization of impeachment during the Clinton years, when we tried to kick a president out of office for getting a blowjob, Bush would have been kicked out of office years ago. But, since Republicans made impeachment a political tool for trying to get rid of a president they merely didn't like, Democrats are scared of being accused of doing the same thing. Meanwhile, impeachable crimes have been willfully committed at the highest levels of this administration since the first days Bush took office. It's a national disgrace. Speaking of which, Ron Suskind's new book offers some stark revelations about the Iraq War and selling the case to the American people. More on that in a bit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lindsay Graham: Iraq war "still a good idea"

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is one of the smarmiest, ideological members of the U.S. Senate. Just the sight of him makes me angry. His many moronic statements, like his comments above, is the main reason why I despise him.

So, let's get this straight - Graham "absolutely" still believes that invading Iraq was a good idea? Granted, the real questions about Iraq should be "where do we go from here," but how we got where we are will be debated for decades to come, too.

It's pretty clear to most Americans (and polls back this up) that invading Iraq was a monumentally stupid idea for so many reasons, chief among them the cost in blood, our standing in the world and the trillions the invasion and occupation will cost us when it's all said and done (and God only knows when that will be).

Yet, people like Graham constantly go on television, smugly telling America that Obama was wrong about the surge, we are winning/will win in Iraq, and blah blah blah. Most of the time, I simply ignore comments like Graham's, but we cannot afford to ignore these comments, any longer, because this ideology will play a part in giving us more of the same - war, war, war, if John McCain is elected president.

What's more, I don't hear any of the warmongers in Congress spelling out exactly what constitutes "victory" in Iraq. The reason we don't get it is because we will never, ever achieve "victory" in Iraq, at least in a traditional sense. The country will very likely in the foreseeable future to be continually plagued by violence, while sucking hundreds of billions from our treasury, all the while keeping soldiers away from their families (Not to mention casualties). To date, 4,125 Americans have given their lives, and for what? A free Iraq? From what I see and read, Iraqis don't seem to care either way, and the country is much worse off now than before we invaded.

And I'm sick to death of people like Graham saying how "evil" Saddam was. It bears repeating, since many people seem to have forgotten WHY we went to war. The Bush administration kept throwing reasons against the wall until one stuck, which ended up being WMD and his nuclear program. At least that's what we were publicly told were the reasons for the war. In hindsight, we went to war for two reasons: to create a free state in the Middle East, and oil. (Scott McClellan backs up the former in his book, which I'm almost done reading.) Whenever I hear the "Saddam is evil" argument, I always think about Darfur. The leaders there have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and Bush has done nothing about it. I guess the Darfur area of Sudan has no oil.

If Saddam Hussein was so evil, then what does that make the leader of Sudan, Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir? (Who by the way was indicted last week for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.) Just wondering.

It's sad and pathetic that over five years after the war began, people like Graham continue to keep flogging the "We are better off without Saddam" argument. Someone needs to slap morons like Graham in the back of the head, because the record playing in his brain keeps skipping back to the same old, trite arguments about the War in Iraq, and how we'll ultimately "win." (The same goes for McCain.)

Even if we do "win," (whatever that constitutes), I'll never be convinced that the cost in lives, blood, money and our decreased standing around the world will have been worth it.

~~

Speaking of "winning wars," McSame had this to say last night in front of about 200 GOP backers during a fundraiser in Baltimore: "My friends [I'll never stop hating it when he says that], I know how to win wars."

Again, I ask, exactly how is that? What experience does he have in "winning wars?" As far as I can tell, this is his formula:

1. Volunteer to go to Vietnam (he wasn't drafted, he finished 894th in a class of 899 at the U.S. Naval Academy; I guess he really is like Bush)

2. Bomb innocent people in North Vietnam

3. Get shot down

4. Spend the rest of the war in prison.

And the last time I checked, Senator, we LOST that war.

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.

PTSD troops getting screwed: watch the vid

I just tonight finally got around to watching last Friday's installment of NOW on PBS, Fighting the Army. I found it very, very difficult to not be totally outraged at what the military is doing to our psychologically damaged soldiers. In short, in many cases, the military is stringing along soldiers with promises of help until they can't take it anymore. The result: they get bounced out on misconduct discharges. This is not to say all cases, but even five of these cases would be too much.

These are soldiers who have made tremendous sacrifices, and this is the thanks they get when they return home. Worse yet, soldiers who are given misconduct discharges are forced to pay back thousands of dollars in signing bonuses.

For those who think that Barack Obama has done nothing while in the Senate (and I know several people who firmly believe just that), he led the way in forcing the Pentagon to begin to change its discharge procedures. However, the changes are far from perfect, and many changes still need to be made.

Count this as just another way that soldiers are getting short-changed by the country they serve. (And the list of ways is tragically long one.) Whether it's getting stop-lossed, receiving inadequate armor and protection on the battlefield, receiving poor care if they are wounded in battle, to symptoms of post-traumatic stress order being ignored, in some cases it's difficult to tell who's screwing our soldiers more - the people throwing bombs at them in Iraq, or the people who see no problem short-changing them deep in the bowels of the Pentagon.

You can watch the entire 30-minute episode Here.

I urge all of you to write your members of Congress to demand that our soldiers, especially those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, be given the proper care that they need. To find your legislators' information, click Here, or better yet, call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 225-3121 and leave your legislators a quick message that this type of treatment needs to stop, NOW.

Best of all, you can vote for the candidate in November who wants to end the madness in Iraq ASAP.

I'll share my letter with you to my members of Congress tomorrow.

Uh, Sen. McCain, about that Iraqi peace...

If Gen. David Petraeus really wants peace for our forces on the ground in Iraq, he ought to simply call John McCain and tell him to keep quiet. Because recently, every time he talks about how swimmingly things are going in the country, there's a huge attack. Above is a speech given by John McCain at the end of last month, when he smugly asserts that all is well in Iraq and Baghdad.

Well, a few days ago, 51 Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomb, including the child below...

This unspeakable, gruesome photo is of a father kissing the body of his two-year-old son, Akeel Faisal Ghazi, who was killed in a minibus bombing in the Huriya district of Baghdad on Tuesday. The blast, which killed 51 people, was the deadliest to hit the capital in three months. [Above photo by Karim Kadim/Associated Press] I know the photo is gruesome, and I debated heavily about whether I should post it, but Americans really do need to start seeing more and more what is happening in our name in the Middle East. I apologize if any of you are offended, but imagine how the Iraqis feel. Sort of puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

I guess things are pretty quiet, eh, Senator McCain? He really ought to just shut up - his mouth seems to bring more bad luck to the beleaguered country. Check out these other incidents from this year, [below] when two of his speeches were interrupted on cable news channels to report on violence in Iraq.

On April 7, a McCain speech was interrupted on MSNBC to mention a mortar attack in Baghdad...

And on March 24...

Like a host of other issues, when McCain opens his mouth about Iraq, a litany of half truths, distortions and inaccuracies are sure to follow.

Olbermann savages McCain about the troops

This is an excellent, spot on Special Comment by Keith Olbermann last week that I forgot to post, but it's still as apropos as ever. (Heck, it could have been last night and it would still be appropriate - better yet, maybe he should just keep replaying it.) In it, Olbermann takes on McCain's absurd comment that it "doesn't really matter" when the troops come home.

To his credit, Olbermann provides plenty of context for McCain's comments, too, including many of his asinine statements in the past about how quickly we were going to achieve victory in Iraq, and a myriad of other statements regarding the war, very few of which have proven to be true.

Recently, Olbermann has stumbled a bit at times, and I've been critical of him. After all, I'm not slavishly devoted to any commentator, liberal or (gasp!) conservative, but it's comments like these where Olbermann is at his very best, and, dare I risk hyperbole, he's doing an important service for his country. His show is still "can't miss TV" every single night. I hope he keeps the heat on McCain and Bush, as he's been doing for the last five years.

It's my hope that people who believe McCain is the strongest candidate when it comes to foreign policy are paying attention to all of his misstatements and inaccurate predictions about Iraq. There's a lot to choose from.

What's more, it's important to remember all of his war mongering about Iran, too. I almost spit up when I saw McCain's ad (below), which paints him as a man of peace, or something. Take a look...

The first seven seconds are all you need to realize how utterly inconceivable this ad is. "Only a fool or fraud talks tough or romantically about war..." Is he joking? He's been talking tough about Iraq for years, and recently, Iran.

McCain must think most Americans are pretty stupid, or indifferent. Does he think that we haven't been paying attention for the past eight years? What other conclusion could you draw? I guess he thinks a packaged, slick advertisement will be a good deodorant for the stench of dead Americans and Iraqis in the Middle East that he has whole-heartedly supported and endorsed for over five years.

Again, I sure hope that Americans remember this stuff in the voting booth.

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.

SIC concludes Bush administration lied about pre-war intelligence

Almost four years after Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) smugly and arrogantly cleared the Bush White House of any wrongdoing on intelligence matters during the run-up to the War in Iraq, yesterday, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Roberts' successor on the Senate Intelligence Committee, reached a harshly different conclusion:

"The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein."

Do I think it will make a difference? I'm guessing probably not. But, it won't help any prominent Republican who has been with Bush every step of the way, including Roberts, one of the most blatantly partisan Republican Senators who is running for re-election against Jim Slattery, and McSame, who might just as well sit on President Bush's shoulder (with Lieberman on the other), he's such a parrot for Bush regarding Iraq.

On Iraq, Bush=McCain in every way

This one is worth repeating over and over and over again (And I will between now and November) - McSame's rhetoric about the War in Iraq and how alike he is to President Bush. McCain has been spewing the same sewage for years about how victory in Iraq is just around the corner. Three years later, hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted, not to mention countless Iraqi lives and thousands of Americans, and we're supposed to trust this guy about what he'll do in the Middle East? Puleeze.

I especially loved the part where McCain gets a beat down about what General Petraeus travels in every day. (I wish the video hadn't cut off his response, which must have been high comedy.) That, My Friends, is a classic example of McCain acting exactly like Bill O'Reilly - making stuff up, thinking no one will check on it. That sort of stuff will not fly in this campaign. McCain's been getting a free ride for months now, as the media paid attention to the contested Democratic Party's race for the nomination.

Now that the Democratic race is over, McCain is going to have to watch his words and his wild, unsubstantiated rhetoric. Actually, here's hoping he doesn't, because lots and lots of embarrassment will be sure to follow.

McCain speaks about G.I. Bill

Today John McCain spoke about the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, known in the media as the G.I. Bill.

I applaud McCain for supporting this bill at first glance, but after listening to his comments about the bill, I do have some issues with his position.

Notice how he phrased his answer to the woman in the video above - very carefully. He wants the benefits to accrue over time to encourage people to stay in the military. Well, that pretty much goes against what Sen. Jim Webb is proposing for our troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. If McCain's words in the video above are taken at face value, it sounds as if McCain doesn't want troops to be eligible for the full benefit for 12 years or more. I completely disagree with this idea. Webb's position is that the people who put it on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan should come home to these benefits NOW. AND THEY SHOULD, period.

I do agree with McCain's proposal that the benefit should be transferable to a family member - that's an excellent idea, and a way for a soldier who wants a military career to still benefit. Actually, I'd go a step further - what about a soldier who wants to stay in the military and who does not have any family? He or she should be able to get some sort of other benefit as well.

I also don't buy into another one of McCain's reasons for opposing Webb's bill - that it's very expensive to train a soldier these days. Yes, it is expensive, but that's not a reason to oppose this bill. Some will leave the armed forces because of this bill, no doubt, but the study McCain refers to, where 16 percent will leave the military, is disputed at best, and I say debunked.

McCain deserves credit for saying he wants to sit down and work out the differences with Webb. Okay, then what's he waiting for? Just wondering if there's any chance he can take a five-minute break from campaigning to get it worked out.

Anyway, there's plenty you can do.

Click on the G.I. Bill's Website to find out more about the bill and to sign an online petition to President Bush to urge him to sign the bill into law. However, I recommend that you do more than that - contact your legislators and demand that they get behind the bill, if they are not already. Click Here to get your legislators' contact information, or call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 225-3121. The operators are very good at connecting you quickly and easily to your elected representative or senators, even if you don't know who they are.

Here is a Quick Fact Sheet about the bill (in PDF form).

Below is also a good video from NBC's Today Show that offers up a quick description of what the bill is all about.

This is something that all Americans can and should get behind. Unless you've served in the military, most Americans, unless they have a loved one or friend serving, have sacrificed very little for this war, and I include myself in not having sacrificed much.

This is the very least we can do to Support the Troops, no matter what the cost is. I've complained before that Support the Troops is an empty slogan on its face, but this is something we can do to actually live up to the spirit of what it really means. We need to do more for our soldiers than simply putting yellow ribbons on our cars. This is a start.

War monger Feith declares war... on truth

When I woke up this morning, a replay of The Daily Show was on Comedy Central where Jon Stewart was interviewing Doug Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy under Donald Rumsfeld. Feith, one of the architects of the War in Iraq, has written a book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, that he's pimping to try and make money off of, since his diplomatic career is in tatters (unless another Bush makes it to the White House, heaven help us). To me, Feith is simply another war profiteer, trying to make money off another destructive war that he played a role in provoking (But who certainly didn't play a role in planning out adequately. Wait, no one from this administration did).

I have to give Jon Stewart a great deal of credit for how he conducted this interview - not lots of jokes or levity - he kept it pretty serious, which isn't always the norm. Kudos to Stewart for holding Feith's feet to the fire, especially the PR and propaganda tactics the Bush administration used to build public "support"during the run-up to the war. At one point, Stewart even quoted then-White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, which seemed to catch Feith off guard.

Note that the footage is just a clip from the full interview, which ran over 20 minutes. If you visit Comedy Central's Website, you can find the full-length interview.

In some circles, including some inside the Bush administration, Feith is known as a totally incompetent imbecile. In fact, Gen. Tommy Franks, the original commander of the ground forces in Iraq, once very famously said regarding Feith, "I have to deal with the stupidest fucking guy on the planet almost every day."

I have to admit that at some point (when it comes out in paperback, at best), I would like to read Feith's book, to try and better understand why this administration blundered us into this disastrous war. Maybe, in the end, I won't agree with Gen. Franks' assessment, but for now, I certainly do, from what I've read and heard about Feith. The above interview did nothing to dispel that opinion, either.

O'Reilly attacks the Daily Kos... again

Here's another piece of entertaining footage - Bill O'Lielly again going after Markos Moulitsas, the founder of The Daily Kos, an excellent liberal blog that's doing a great deal of important work.

The bottom line here is that O'Reilly can't handle criticism, and when prominent liberal blogs go after him for his lies and distortions, he gets his dander up, labeling them "hate sites." Of course, BOR can never get through a criticism of anything or anyone liberal without a Nazi or KKK reference - in this case likening Moulitsas to David Duke - which is pretty hilarious.

I got a good laugh out of O'Reilly and Mary Katherine Ham coddling each other about how disgusting the pictures are of Iraqi War casualties. Yes, they are disgusting, but it's violence that this administration has caused, period. So, I get a kick out of conservatives expressing horror and disgust whenever a liberal Website has the temerity to publish unpleasant images of the War in Iraq. Too damn bad - this is violence that your president has caused.

And Ham and O'Reilly, as usual, can't get through a criticism about a liberal blog without mentioning the comments section in any Website, either, be it the Daily Kos or The Huffington Post. Too bad O'Reilly allows many hate filled comments on his site, too, as detailed by some great work on the part of Crooks & Liars.

Bill W over at C&L probably makes the best point of all:

Somehow Newsweek shouldn't have hired Kos because of what other people say in the comments or post in their user blogs, but of course [O'Reilly's] okay with [Fox News] hiring Rove who has been involved in scandal after scandal. Who's more like David Duke? Kos, or the guy behind the robocalls [who] said McCain had an illegitimate black child? I'm just sayin'.

Sweet. I couldn't have said it better myself. More on Rove's role at Fox, as well as his status as a McCain consultant, in a bit.

A real way to Support the Troops

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) deserves our thanks for what he is trying to do for our troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan - getting a modern-day G.I. Bill passed that will give our troops a free education. After all, whether you agree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or not, I would hope we would all agree that it's the very least we can do for those serving in combat and putting their lives on the line.

As Webb and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) recently wrote in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times:

In terms of providing true opportunity, the World War II G.I. Bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation in our history. It paid college tuition and fees, bought textbooks and provided a monthly stipend for eight million of the 16 million who served. Many of our colleagues in the Senate who before the war could never have dreamed of college found themselves at some of the nation’s finest educational institutions.

[...]

Veterans today have only the Montgomery G.I. Bill, which requires a service member to
pay $100 a month for the first year of his or her enlistment in order to receive a flat payment for college that averages $800 a month. This was a reasonable enlistment
incentive for peacetime service, but it is an insufficient reward for wartime service today.

It is hardly enough to allow a veteran to attend many community colleges.
It would cover only about 13 percent of the cost of attending Columbia, 42 percent at the University of Hawaii, 14 percent at Washington and Lee, 26 percent at U.C.L.A. and 11 percent at Harvard Law School.

College costs have skyrocketed, and a full G.I. Bill for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan would be expensive. But Congress has recently appropriated $19 billion next year for federal education grants purely on the basis of financial need. A G.I. Bill for those who have given so much to our country, often including repeated combat tours, should be viewed as an obligation.

Absolutely, 100 percent right, without equivocation. Yes, it probably will be expensive, but what money could be better spent? We are spending between $12-16 billion a month in Iraq, and for what?

Hagel and Webb are absolutely right - the G.I. Bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history, educating over eight million people who served in World War II. This new G.I. Bill would have a dramatic impact on America's educational and technological competitiveness in the global economy.

However, McCain and Bush are against it, and their reasons are patently absurd, even for them. Both think it's "too expensive," which I find just stunning - really I don't even have the words to express how patently absurd I find that line of reasoning. McCain's logic? It will make leaving the military "too attractive," causing a personnel drain on the military. Incredible. Webb and his cosponsors are working with the various branches of the military to make sure the bill doesn't harm the military - they merely want to help vets get the benefits they deserve.

I certainly hope voters remember who is for and who is against this bill in November - I'm sure that members of the military won't forget.

What I really admire about Webb, as he discussed on Meet the Press yesterday (above), is that he really is trying to keep the politics out of it, and this bill has lots of bipartisan support. It really is good to see that members of Congress can actually come together on some things and get meaningful legislation passed. Here's hoping the votes are there to override Bush's expected veto. My attitude is this - let Bush veto it. If he (along with Senator McCain) wants to go on the record against giving our troops what they deserve, it will be there for all voters to see.

I urge you to please contact your Senators and House Representative and let them know you are paying attention to this bill, and that it must be passed. Call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 225-3121 to be connected to any member of Congress (and an operator can find out who yours is, if you don't know), or click Here to find out your legislators' contact information.

Happy Mission Accomplished Day, everyone

I can't believe it's been five years. My, how time flies when you're wasting millions, er, billions, I mean trillions.

I won't take off on a rant about how this day five years ago marked the most absurd, asinine presidential photo-op ever, when Bush flew in a plane and landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in his clown outfit.

Since then, we're torpedoed our credibility, economy, standing in the world, the treasury, and, quite frankly, our entire electoral process in more ways that I have time to get into in this brief post.

It's worth looking back on, but more importantly, it's worth looking toward the future, too, because only one of the remaining presidential candidates wants more of the same in Iraq, and that's John McSame. His rationale? We can't "wave the white flag of surrender" like the Democrats want to do.

I'm soo tired of this slogan-driven administration - everything it does has a slogan behind it, and this war is no different.

But, since it's Dubya's fifth birthday, I'll indulge him...

Bush's political allies like to say Democrat's want to "cut and run." However, I like to say that Bush and McCain want to "stay and pay," and by "pay" I mean in trillions of dollars, but most importantly of all, the thousands of lives lost, both American and Iraqi. How do you put a price tag on that?

More to come later today...

Body of War trailer

A few days ago I wrote about Body of War, a documentary about Tomas Young, an Iraqi War vet who is now paralyzed from the chest down after being struck by a bullet while serving in combat. Anyway, I found the trailer and wanted to bring it to you. I love it when lies and distortions are preserved for all eternity on video tape, and when said footage comes back to bite a politician in the arse. Looks like this movie contains plenty of that; the more the merrier.

The big question I have is where does the right wing come down on Young, Phil Donahue and this movie? Are these guys unpatriotic? Where is Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh? I would love to hear them criticize this man the same way they bludgeoned Cindy Sheehan on an almost-daily basis during the summer and fall of 2004. What's more, Young still has a brother over in the Middle East. Tomas Young deserves nothing short of our complete and unconditional respect. Something tells me he's not going to get it from Faux News and all its puppets. And he shouldn't care one bit, either.