Repubs Think Women Are Stupid

In addition to the fact that John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin is the most cynical mockery of the tradition that a presidential candidate picks his running mate, McCain’s choice is a clear indication that the Republican Party assumes all women are silly twits and stupid. The Republican Party has declared that the women who worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign are going to run like mesmerized rats behind pied piper Palin and cheerfully, nay, giddily vote for John McCain simply to have a woman as Vice President. Presumably, the thinking behind this preposterous idea is, as Samantha Bee said on The Daily Show on Friday night: since all women have boobs and a vagina, all women have so much in common with Palin. The missing detail in this Republican strategy is that all the women who were committed to Hillary Clinton’s campaign also have a functioning, well-exercised, well-organized BRAIN. And having a functioning brain militates against voting for McCain in the first place. But having a working brain certainly makes it unlikely that one would vote for McCain in order to have an inexperienced self-described soccer-mom from Alaska at the helm if an unwell and aged McCain drops dead during his presidency. When asked what Palin’s qualifications are, Republican flacks and sycophants say she is a mother of five, has already been mayor of a town and governor of a state and therefore she is fully qualified to be president of the United States, should that occasion arise. Given the last eight years of having a narcissistic, bumbling, braindead, alcoholic, drug-loving, low-achieving, delusional Republican as our president, it is not surprising that the Republican Party would have no qualms about putting forward Sarah Palin as Vice President. Even though the town she was Mayor of, Wasilla—a suburb of Anchorage—has only 9000 people, and the state she governs has a population the size of Milwaukee. But it’s the cynicism of the choice of Sarah Palin that is so disturbing. The youngest of her five children has Down Syndrome. Ralph Reed remarked about Palin’s having an impaired baby rather than having an abortion, “it is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community." Reed is that paragon of corrupt sleaze from the born-again faction who is implicated in the ongoing Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. John McCain met Sarah Palin once. McCain was 72 this past Friday and has been treated for many bouts of melanoma and has health problems. Even so, he decided that Sarah Palin, who is inexperienced and knows nothing about Washington, DC politics or foreign policy, would be a dandy running mate because she is a woman and because she decided against having an abortion. Up until last Friday I was bored with the campaign hype and nonsense from both sides of the aisle and particularly from the TV pundits and mavens. That has changed. I am looking forward to a debate or maybe a series of debates between Obama’s running mate, Senator Joe Biden, who knows more about Washington politics and foreign policy than anyone in Washington, and Ms Know-nothing Palin who has only five years of politics under her belt and those years have been spent in Alaska. Oh, by the way, the Alaska state legislature this week voted to hire an independent investigator to see whether Ms. Palin abused her office by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper. Heh! Heh-heh-heh!!!!! The circus has definitely come to town.

Want To Help Obama?

Tell everyone to read Frank Rich in the New York Times today. First, I will say, without fear of being wrong because I know it’s true: The Mainstream Media is interested only in selling its product. And as an editor of mine used to tell me 24 years ago, “You’ve got to add some conflict to your reports. Conflict sells.” And there you have it. I do not believe for a minute that McCain is neck and neck with Obama. And he certainly is not ahead of Obama. But the IDEA that the race may be close, the IDEA that McCain can win is being fueled by the Mainstream Media because otherwise this election season is BORING-BORING-BORING. That said, let me quote a few facts about McCain from the Rich article. This is by way of helping any of you who like to have FACTS to show to those who might benightedly consider voting for John McCain. As Rich says, the public does NOT know John McCain. Because the public is as forgetful as the Senator from Arizona himself is forgetful: Rich says, “What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence peddlers. With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.” Rich goes on to say: “McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras. McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.” Rich writes: “Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.” Further on, Rich quotes Josh Marshall’s “Talking Points Memo”, saying: “Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail ‘McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.’ Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.” So, read Frank Rich today and arm yourself with facts about the very senior and very forgetful, lying, unprincipled, even corrupt loose cannon Senator John McCain, who will do anything and say anything and kiss the ass of any Republican to further his campaign for the presidency.

Well, Yes, It’s Been Awhile Since I’ve Posted..

BUT... this is too lovely to ignore. The New York Times just sent out an aviso that Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), “the longest serving US Republican senator ever” was indicted today on seven counts of making false statements after a year-long investigation. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Basically, I am soooooo sick of news reports about Obama and McCain that I can barely stand to read a newspaper or watch TV. But this little tidbit has me giddy with good humor. The NYT says Stevens’s troubles “stem from his ties to an oil executive whose company won millions of dollars in federal contracts with the help of Mr. Stevens, whose home in Alaska was almost doubled in size in the renovation project.” And the NYT goes on to say, “The indictment will surely reverberate through the November elections. Mr. Stevens, who has been in the Senate for 40 years, is up for re-election this year. Mark Begich, a popular Democratic mayor of Anchorage, hopes to supplant him.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My feeling of bonhomie and goodwill to men will, I feel sure, extend even into the Yankees game tonight with Baltimore, no matter what.

Is There Any Doubt?

Number 1, that the war in Iraq was entered into and engaged in because the Bush administration and the Republican Party were interested in controlling Iraq (and eventually, the Middle East’s) oil. Number 2, that John McCain is a dupe and a puppet of the Bush administration. Re Number 1: I give you the New York Times article this morning: “Committee Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal”. The lede paragraph states: “Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.” The article goes on to say: “The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.” The investigation into the improprieties (a nice word where “Bush administration criminal activities” might better be used) of this oil deal is being handled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose chairman is Representative Henry A. Waxman, D-CA. The NYT says: “A State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.” According to the NYT, the State Department said Wednesday that it had discouraged the deal. Hunt officials declined to comment, and Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety. However, a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from Mr. Waxman states that the documents his committee had collected “tell a different story about the role of administration officials.” The committee obtained letters in which Mr. Hunt informed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which Hunt was a member, last July and August that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan. Until a law regarding Iraq oil is signed and sealed by all parties—Iraq, Kurdistan, the US—any deal between the parties re oil is totally illegal and unethical. But nevermind! The NYT wrote: “The encouragement by State Department officials did not end with the signing of the contract (with Kurdistan) on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Five days later, a State Department official in the southern city of Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips (a senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt Oil), 'I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government...I don’t know if you are aware of another opportunity,' the official wrote, mentioning an enormous port project and a natural gas project in the south. After a few more lines, the official concluded, 'This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt'." Regarding Item No. 2 that John McCain is a dupe and puppet of the Bush administration, please note that McCain has once again shaken up his presidential campaign. This time he has elevated Steve Schmidt to be in charge of day-to-day campaign operations. This move downsizes the responsibilities of McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis. Please note that Steve Schmidt was a close associate of Karl Rove during Rove’s heyday in the Bush administration. Also please note that Nicolle Wallace, communications director for Mr. Bush in the 2004 campaign (and in his White House), has joined McCain’s campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with Mr. McCain every other week. And another cohort of Rove’s operation and former Fox News producer and director of presidential advance in the Bush White House, Greg Jenkins, was hired by Steve Schmidt last week. No doubts whatsoever.

Now Here’s a GREAT Suggestion....

The tag line in Frank Rich’s New York Times OpEd column this morning is terrific. Rich chapter-and-verses how stupid Repub candidate John McCain’s stance on the war in Iraq is and has been. Rich doesn’t particularly support Obama’s position on the war either though, mainly because there can be no positive outcome in Iraq no matter what is put forth. But Rich has this proposal: “Not that the Obama policy is foolproof either. As everyone knows, there are no good options in Iraq. Our best hope for a bipartisan resolution of this disaster may be for a President Obama to appoint Mr. McCain as a special envoy to Baghdad, where he can stay for as long as he needs to administer our withdrawal or 100 years, whichever comes first.” McCain being sent to Iraq to serve America in his last years sounds like a splendid and marvelously fitting idea. What’s not to like?

“There Was Suspicion “...I Guess So!

The New York Times reports this morning, “Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.” The NYT went on to say: “Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.” As the NYT understatedly stated, “There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.” Of course the following cockroach claim was made by the Bush administration: “the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.” The NYT reported that a spokesman for The Iraqi Oil Ministry said, “the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament.” The NYT further explained: “The Iraqi Oil Ministry said “the companies had been chosen because they had been advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts, and because these companies had the needed technology.It said the companies had been chosen because they had been advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts, and because these companies had the needed technology.” So...how soon do you reckon the price for crude will go back down to $40 a barrel from the present $140 per barrel? Right! Or, as the NYT says, “The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry. They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.” There is still the problem of the civil war and the insurgents caused by the Republican invasion of Iraq which was entered into in order to secure these exact contracts. But at current oil prices the oil companies are more than willing to deal with war, death and privation. Five years later and 4101 American soldier deaths and the Republicans got what they came for. Lovely!

I Know, I Know...

I haven’t posted in ages. I was in God’s Country aka Brooklyn for a week and some other stuff was going on. Howsomever....I just want to say that Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times today is brilliant!!!!!! That’s it. BRILLIANT!!!!!

McCain’s Big, Bigger, BIGGEST LIE

Yesterday, the McCain camp released 1,172 pages of McCain’s medical records. That is to say, as the New York Times put it, “a tightly controlled pool of about 20 reporters was shown into a conference room at the CopperWynd Resort near the Mayo Clinic. The reporters were permitted three hours to review and take notes on the 1,173 pages of Mr. McCain’s medical documents, spanning 2000 to 2008, but they were not permitted to remove the documents from the room or photocopy them.” And all the doctors dutifully reported that McCain is in great health, mentally and physically, that he may once have had malignant melanoma but he’s all better now; that, relatively speaking, he’s on few drugs (none for mental problems); that he would make an awesome and healthy prez at age 72. Joy Tomme would like to respond, “BULLSHIT!” to that bullshit. If the tag line to the NYT article is any indication of the truth of the medical report, then the medical report is a mendacious cover-up perpetrated by a bunch of cover-up liars. NYT tag line: "As a prisoner of war, Mr. McCain told doctors, he had tried to commit suicide twice. But by 1977, he said he had 'all but forgotten the traumas of captivity.'" My God! Who is he kidding? Ask guys who weren’t subjected to torture in POW camps, but simply fought the war in Viet Nam. Ask guys who didn’t try to commit suicide twice, but came home with war wounds. Have they, could they all but forget the traumas? And, if it’s remotely possible that McCain did forget, then that’s worse. Even in the medical reports that have now been kind–of-sort-of released, McCain’s mental state is glossed over. I would like to see psychiatric evaluations by psychiatrists who are not government/and or military flacks. I would like to know what meds he’s taking for mental health. Of course, we are no more likely to know those facts than we are going to know about McCain’s wife’s finances in exquisite detail. Let me quote a couple of paragraphs from the back page story (“Ferguson”) in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine section. The article is by Michael Norman who teaches journalism at New York University. Norman tells about a Marine, Ferguson, who Norman knew for only one minute in Viet Nam before Ferguson fell on top of him dead. First paragraph: “A colleague dropped by on a recent day to tell me that it was the third anniversary of her son’s coming home from Iraq. That stopped me. It’s been 40 years since I stepped off the battlefield and I’m not home yet. I can still feel the muck of rice paddies pulling on my boots, still hear the jungle hiss and snap in the dark. Even after the night dreams and day drifts have stopped and the loud noises no longer startle, you still press your chin against your shoulder and look back.” Last paragraph: “So I took Ferguson home with me. Who else was going to remember him? Who else among us “knew” him and could carry his good name, his reputation, the memory of him as a marine? Remembering was part of the bargain we all made, the reason we were so willing to die for one another.” McCain’s big lie is that he doesn’t remember the horrors of Viet Nam, his bigger lie is that the torture and horrors of Viet Nam have not had a lasting and irreparable ill effect on him. And his biggest lie is that he is physically and mentally fit to be president of the United States. John McCain is not mentally or physically fit to be president, nor can he be expected to be. McCain should not have been allowed to run for president. But the worst of it is that these guys believe the citizens of the United States think it's commendable for a man to fight a war, be imprisoned by torturers and have no effects from it. (And they are willing to lie to push that agenda.) IT IS NOT COMMENDABLE. And it is not possible.

The Issue Is Color

The headline in the NYT today reads: “Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama” Two women having brunch in Boynton Beach were quoted in the article. Both are 83 years old. Ms Weitz said, “The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel. “They’re going to vote for McCain,” she said. Ms Grossman didn’t disagree that Florida Jews would not vote for Obama. But her reasoning was different from Ms. Weitz. “They’ll pick on the minister thing, they’ll pick on the wife, but the major issue is color,” she said. Ms Grossman will probably vote for Obama she said. But she is keeping her mouth shut about that. I heard a woman here in Philadelphia say she couldn’t vote for a man whose name was so close to Osama. The color element in this election is sticky. We’ll never know how many people boasted they had no problem voting for a black man when they had no intention of voting for a black man. But it sounded good at the time. How many people will carry their racism to the extent that they will vote for McCain rather than vote black? Probably not a huge percentage. The NYT says Jews account for 5 percent of the vote in Florida. And, as Ms Weitz and Ms Grossman can attest, not all Florida Jews will vote for McCain. Besides, it is difficult to come up with plausible reasons to vote for McCain that would adequately cover up innate racism. Also, antipathy regarding color has more resonance with senior citizens than it does with young voters. But color is a factor in this election and it may represent an obstacle for Obama in the next four years. If Obama is the Democrat Party’s candidate and wins, how many in Congress will oppose his policies because he’s black? We don’t know. The interesting thing is that most white people do not know the extent of their racism. It can’t be reasoned away with logic, but it’s there, in the background, underneath, nearly forgotten and hidden. And like a successful nose job, you can forget what it looked like until a reminder rises up from the past. If ever there was a moment to GET OVER IT, it is now. In our world today, color is irrelevant.

John McCain is Certifiable

McCain has been told to distance himself from the Prez because Bush is the worst and most unpopular President ever to have been foisted on the American public. And also because Bush is insane. One way the insane McCain is distancing himself from the insane Prez is by setting a date when the US will be out of Iraq, which Crazy George would never do. Yesterday, Crazy John said that the war in Iraq will have been won (WON! As in VICTORY IS OURS!) by 2013. Not only that, in what has been called “a mystical speech” McCain said that by 2013 Osama bin Laden will be dead or captured, al-Qaeda will have been defeated, Iraq will be functioning on its own, Afghanistan will be shut of the Taliban, and Americans will have the choice of simply paying a flat tax or using form 1040. I have a few prophesies of my own. By 2013, John McCain will be 77 and will be incapacitated by his physical maladies or dead from cancer. In any case, he will have been committed to a loony bin for the hopelessly insane. Nothing will have changed in Iraq, and if our troops are still in Iraq they will still be being killed for no good reason, Afghanistan will still be in the drug trade from which the US will be profiting, as it is now and nothing will have changed. The IRS will be doing business about the same way it is doing business today. Bin Laden will be dead from his physical maladies and he never was captured. The US will be coming up on the second term of a Democratic president under a Democratic administration who will be doing its level best to undo the disasters and criminal acts the Republicans visited on the United States from 2000 through 2008. Oh. And George W. Bush will be drinking and using drugs openly and on a monumental scale. The Bush family and the Secret Service will try to keep him out of sight and will be mostly successful except when he occasionally escapes and causes a ruckus.

The Out-of-Touch News Industry

It used to be “If it Bleeds, It Leads”. The new formula is: If We Dread It, We Spread It. The Sean Bell verdict was all over the news last week when an NYC judge acquitted the cops who pumped 50 bullets into Bell who was black. The news guys predicted riots in the streets. But a report to me from Harlem Saturday night said all was serene. On the day George W. Bush announced he was going to invade Iraq, the news guys said there would be rioting at ground zero between protesters and war-mongers. I was at ground zero that day. There was nothing. But nothing. No protesters, no war-mongers. NOTHING! And no one in NYC was even talking about the war. The news guys have been hyping the candidacies for the election next November in the same way. Perhaps it’s actually wishful thinking. Perhaps the news guys wish to hell they had something juicy to write about. But what’s happening at the grassroots level of politics and our lives is definitely not juicy. And it’s not sexy. And no matter how much the media amps it up, it is not going to be juicy or sexy. Folks are going to go to the polls in November and they are going to vote. That’s it. And racism, feminism, black power, white power and born-again Jesus power aren't going to have very much to do with the outcome. Folks hate the George W. Bush administration. Folks hate the war in Iraq. Folks want relative peace and equality in their lives. Folks want ministers to bug out of politics. Folks want the US government to comport itself with intelligence and rationality. That’s it. And by August, at the latest, most folks will have ceased watching the pundits, analysts and news idiots on television, because whatever it is they are reporting, whatever it is they are yammering about, whatever it is they have decided is panic-worthy has very little to do with what is going on in people’s lives. And it has very little to do with how folks think and feel. I am somewhat ahead of that schedule. As of yesterday, I have sworn off the Sunday morning talk shows and anything on CNN except Michael Ware. May they all live and be well, but they will have to do it without me.

The Bush Stink is on the Candidates

There is little doubt that the last eight years of Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove will go down in history as one of the worst (if not the worst) presidential administration in the history of the United States. Bragging rights to successes for this executive branch are few and difficult to find. But now that its fowl are coming home to roost, and now that it’s floundering, and now that the men behind the Great George’s curtain are in full view and mostly naked, it’s beginning to be evident that fallout from the Bush administration’s modus operandi is leaking into everything. An article in this morning’s New York Times (“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”) about how the Pentagon co-opted its military analysts, quotes Fox analyst Robert S. Bevelacqua saying, “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you’.” And it worked. the Pentagon and Karl Rove & Co. were able to stick their hands up news organizations backs, up TV studios, up Congressmen, up generals’ backs, up the Bush Cabinet, up the CIA, up the FBI, up the Justice Department and they spoke for everyone. The results were and are horrendous, and yet...getting those results is mighty tempting. And that is exactly what Hillary, Obama and McCain’s strategists are doing. All strategists for all the candidates are sticking their hands up the candidates’ backs and moving their mouths for them. And it has become a horror show. We no longer hear what the candidates think or want to say. We hear what their strategists and polls and focus groups think the candidates should think and want to say. If there is an honest, heartfelt thought arising in any candidates mind, it will not be heard. Some strategist will think a thought and that will be heard because the strategist is dead certain he/she knows what the nation needs to hear and what will get votes. Yes, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove & Co. can be blamed for the woeful state the United States is in. But one unintended result that is rippling through our lives is that good people are using Bush administration tactics because they were successful. And it’s heartbreaking to watch. It’s now way beyond candidates getting botoxed and having work done, being coifed and looking fit and smiling and laughing and joking and making one-liners and wearing attractive clothes and pretty ties. Now it's remembering talking points and most particularly, trying not to let the strategist's hand show.

The Pope’s Hubristic Twaddle

What balls! Before Joseph Cardinal Aloysius Ratzinger became Pope exactly three years ago, he was called Pope John Paul II’s “Enforcer”. And if he learned anything as one of Hitler’s Nazi Youths (oh yes, I know he says he was forced into it), he learned that freedom of choice is a bad thing and that people’s freedom must be curtailed or they will start thinking for themselves and making personal decisions. Which is why he was called John Paul’s Enforcer. As Ratzinger’s biographer, John L. Allen has said, “Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesial totalitarianism. In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes. “ As the keeper of the Roman Catholic Church’s arrogant, mythical and patently silly dogma and hype that it alone is the one true religion, Ratzinger was and is unbending, dictatorial and mean as a snake. But yesterday, this nasty piece of work pontificated before the General Assembly at the United Nations: “The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security,” Pope Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger Benedict XVI wouldn’t understand human rights if it bit him in the ass. Barack Obama and his preacher-friend Reverend Jeremiah Wright have gotten in so much hot water over Wright’s fiery prose from the pulpit. And yet, who is calling the lying, oppressive, bigoted, greedy, Prada-wearing sinners in the Vatican to account? NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-NO ONE-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Catholic churches are being closed down all over the US. There aren’t enough priests. And the nuns have finally gotten wise that they were performing free cleaning, washing and ironing for these cigar-smoking, good wine and spirits drinking guys who were too holy to wash their own underwear, so nuns have called a halt on their menial services. The Catholic Church is falling apart from the inside. But the CEO’s and CPA’s and MDivs and Cardinals and THE POPE in the Vatican are still living high. And they would no more think of divesting themselves of one ounce of gold or one gem, or one piece of art, or one foot of real estate than they would think of scrubbing their own floors or servicing their own computers. There is no moral difference whatsoever between the Vatican and a company like Exxon. Both organizations lie and screw the little guy. I will say, the Pope’s hats are more fanciful than those worn by moguls in mega-corporations, but that’s the sole dissimilarity.

NYT’s Rich: Petraeus/Crocker Show is Dead

And the reason it’s dead is because Americans are so sick of the Repubs’ war in Iraq that they don’t even want to hear about it. Today, the New York Times Sunday Op/Ed Columnist Frank Rich said (“The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook”) that even if John McCain becomes president, the US will have a new policy as soon as next January, including serious troop withdrawals in Iraq and serious talks with Iraq’s pals in Iran. The part about the possibility that McCain might become Prez is a horror I can’t even remotely entertain, but Rich is right about everything else. Iraq has come to mean guilt and shame to Americans. As a nation, we want out. In addition to wanting to have done with a war that most Americans feel should never have happened, the US can’t sustain the war and also have even a semblance of readiness to engage in other threats that may arise. As Rich says, “No war can be fought indefinitely if the public has irrevocably turned against it.” And this public has turned against it. The Senior US Commander in Iraq David Petraeus and American ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker looked ridiculous and sounded like robots repeating nonsense phrases and meaningless sophistry at the Congressional hearings last week. Rich said, “The best General Petraeus could muster was a bit of bloodless Beltway-speak — ‘national interests’ — followed by another halfhearted attempt to overstate Iraq’s centrality to the war on Al Qaeda and a future war on Iran. He couldn’t even argue that we’re on a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people. That would require him to acknowledge that roughly five million of those people, 60 percent of them children, are now refugees receiving scant help from either our government or Nuri al-Maliki’s. That’s nearly a fifth of the Iraqi population — the equivalent of 60 million Americans — and another source of our shame. “The prevailing verdict on the Petraeus-Crocker show is that it accomplished little beyond certifying President Bush’s intention to kick the can to January 2009 so that the helicopters will vacate the Green Zone on the next president’s watch. That’s true, but by week’s end, I became more convinced than ever that in January we’ll have a new policy that includes serious withdrawals and serious conversations with Mr. Maliki’s pals in Iran, even if John McCain becomes president.” And both Colin Powell and the army’s vice chief of staff General Richard Cody said the current troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be continued. Even a Republican prez will find he can’t sustain vetoes, Rich said, “after the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in November.” And that’s pretty much where it’s at. Or as Rich put it, “Unable to even look at the fiasco anymore, the nation is now just waiting for someone to administer the last rites.”

President Petraeus, Chairman of Lunacy Bush

Yesterday our Chief Lunatic said that Acting President of the United States and Senior US Commander in Iraq David Petraeus could “have all the time he needs” before reducing US troops in Iraq. The Lunatic spoke at the White House to a small group including VP Dick Cheney, the secretaries of State and Defense and representatives of veterans’ organizations. Bush defended the lives lost and the money spent on his unnecessary war in Iraq. He said that his “surge” last year had averted potential defeat and that withdrawing troops would be catastrophic to American interests. All of which, of course, only an insane man and his insane cohorts could claim. American forces have been defeated in Iraq. And the entire Iraq operation from beginning to now (there is no end in sight) has been catastrophic to all American interests except Vice President Dick Cheney’s companies that profit from war and the consequences of war. Bush said that Al Qaeda and Iran are the biggest threats facing the United States. He said, “If we fail there, Al Qaeda would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions, and they could gain safe havens in Iraq from which to attack the United States, our friends and our allies,” he said. “Iran would work to fill the vacuum in Iraq, and our failure would embolden its radical leaders and fuel their ambitions to dominate the region.” The US has already failed in wiping out Al Qaeda and will continue to fail. And wiping out Iran is the success Bush and Cheney envision, which, of course has failed and will fail. All of the failures feared by George W. Bush have already happened. The only way he can keep from acknowledging that his worst fears have come to pass is to keep stating that they will come to pass unless the war in Iraq goes on for the next 100 years. Six more months. And then voters have to decide whether they want John McCain to prolong this madness or if they want it to stop.

The Madness of John McCain (and Others)

The guy that President George W. Bush turned the Iraq war over to when he abdicated all responsibility for his unnecessary and illegal attack on Iraq, General David Petraeus, is in Washington, DC for two days of hearings before Congress. The hearings started yesterday. Petraeus acknowledged before the Senate, “We haven’t turned any corners. We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.” He said any new withdrawals of American troops should be delayed until the fall. As in, after the election. And yet, according to the New York Times this morning, Senator and candidate for president John McCain (R-AZ) said at that same hearing: “We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.” Presumably McCain was talking about the war in Iraq. Although he could have been talking about some war game he’s got going in his addled brain. Who knows? The Prez steered clear of the hearings, but will make a speech tomorrow regarding his Iraq policy for the coming months, However, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said in frustration, “A year ago, the president argued that we wouldn’t begin to withdraw troops from Iraq, because there was too much violence...now the president argues we can’t begin to withdraw troops, because violence is down.” The April 14, 2008 issue of The New Yorker reported that when General Richard A. Cody appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, he said, in essence, Iraq and Afghanistan have so weakened our defenses that we’d be up the creek if we need our army to protect us. “Today’s army is out of balance,” he said. And he went on to say, “The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply, and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies.” We can’t defend ourselves, the nation is bankrupt, the President lives in an alternate reality of delusion, his clone and Republican candidate for president John McCain not only loves war, but he lives in permanent nostalgia for war mode and he is also seriously demented. Last Sunday, Frank Rich said in his New York Times Op/Ed column that the Dem candidates for president Senators Obama and Clinton are doing John McCain a disservice by constantly saying McCain “is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.” Rich reported that McCain actually said in the New Hampshire town-hall meeting that he “could imagine a 100-year-long American role in Iraq like our long-terms presence in South Korea and Japan”. Fair enough. But when reviewing what people say and have said, it is also necessary to review the mind-set of that person. And John McCain’s unsettled mind is obsessed with war. The other day he said he hates war. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! John McCain would sink into a morass of elder depression without a war on which to feed his Vietnam POW neuroses. Today, General Petraeus and American ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker will take their Iraq war song-and-dance to the House of Representatives. I have two memories of these two men. Alas, they are my only memories of these two men. One is of Petraeus handing out bags of money from the backs of trucks to any and all comers in Iraq, friend and foe alike, as bribes. The other is of the pretentious little putz Crocker holding piss-elegant soirees in the safety of his mansion in the Green Zone in Baghdad as a way of coercing visiting Congresspersons into prolonging the Iraq war and ponying-up more money for the Republican’s ridiculous war. McCain, Petraeus and Crocker—what embarrassing specimens they are.

You’re Not Alone

Headline in the New York Times this morning: “81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track” The NYT reported: “In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed ‘things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,’ up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002. “Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.” And a news aviso from the NYT at 8:50 this morning said: “U.S. Economy Shed 80,000 Jobs in March. U.S. employers cut payrolls for a third month in a row in the biggest monthly job decline in five years, government data showed.” So, who are in the 19% who think everything is just ducky? For certain, the folks in the White House who haven’t already jumped ship would be in that group. And the folks who are stumping for delusional loose-cannon John McCain to continue the Republican track record of the last 7 years would be in that elite number. And the born-again warmongers who think God has it in for everyone but born-again warmongers would be part of that crew. The NYT went on to say: “A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.” What’s it all mean? Well, our nation is in really bad shape. And the world knows we’re in bad shape, which makes us vulnerable to economic, and security disasters, of course. And the world and compilers of facts that become the tomes of history know that the whole nasty shebang is due to the Bush administration. But more than that, it means that everyone in Congress is going to have a very tough time getting re-elected and that is good. Throw the bastards out is a healthy national attitude. Of course, the real culprit in the downfall of the nation is the entire Republican Party. But the Democrats in Congress who let the Repubs get away with it for 7 years cannot be ignored. So what about the three who are now candidates for president? They were part of the out-of-control Congress that brought the US to grief. That’s true. But this democracy thing is a work-in-progress and very imperfect. However, it’s the system we’ve got. And the system we’ve got needs a lot of improvement.

This Is Okay With the AMA?

Veramyst (commonly misspelled Veramist) is a prescription nasal spray (fluticasone furoate) used to treat “seasonal and perennial allergies”. Veramyst is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. Veramyst is being hawked on television. The ad I’ve been seeing is on ABC (Channel 6 in Philadelphia.) A 30-day Free Trial is offered. On-line ads make it clear that it is “the first 30-day prescription” that is free. As an afterthought in the TV ad, it is suggested you tell your doctor you are using Veramyst. For God’s sake, Veramyst is a steroid. The possible side-effects mentioned in the TV ad are: nasal sores, nosebleeds, cataracts and glaucoma. Additional side-effects noted in the on-line blurbs are: slow growth in children, steroid toxicity, weakening of immune system. It’s not news that the medical profession is in bed with the pharmaceutical profession because of GREED. It’s no news that the pharmaceutical profession is at least as corrupt as the mobsters depicted in “The Sopranos”. (At least da mob on TV had a sense of humor.) But it is news and it’s also shocking that the medical profession condones free trial offers of dangerous drugs. How these free 30-day prescriptions are monitored, I have no idea. The fact that they are offered at all is scandalous. It’s one thing for your doctor to hand out samples of drugs in his office. It’s quite another for hucksters and snake-oil salesman to hawk free trials of drugs on TV. But the disturbing thing is that it’s okay with the AMA. At long last, sirs, have you no shame?

Five Years Later

On March 19, 2003 president George W. Bush announced that he and his imperialist cronies had decided to invade Iraq on March 20th. Yesterday, on the anniversary of that announcement, the Prez said: “Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it. The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight that America can and must win.” Yesterday when Vice President Dick Cheney was told that two-thirds of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, he replied, “So?" When questioned further he said, "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls." Yesterday, Barack Obama said: “Where are we for all of this sacrifice?...We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained.” Yesterday, Hillary Clinton said she would begin withdrawing troops within 60 days of her taking office. She added: “Every one of you who has served knows with drawing troops can be as dangerous as inserting them.” Yesterday, George Bush’s clone John McCain said he had visited Iraq this week and the US and its allies are “on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism.” Yesterday, the number of American soldiers killed in the Bush/McCain/imperialist Republicans' war had risen to 3992. Yesterday, the cost of the war in Iraq to US taxpayers was $600 billion and escalating. Today, Iraq is in a civil war with no end in sight, except in the addled minds of two mentally unstable men—George W. Bush and John McCain--and in the minds of men who look to make money on war, and/or can’t admit they were wrong. Today, the rest of the world says, ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

Maureen Dowd Nails It

This morning, Maureen Dowd talks about Barack Obama’s speech yesterday (New York Times Op/Ed column--"Black, White and Grey"). She says Obama has finally entered the realm where politicians actually live—the realm of ambivalence, ambiguity and complexity. Dowd says Obama’s speech on race was “momentous and edifying”. She also said “facing up to his dubious behavior toward his explosive friends, he had his first rude introduction in his political career to ambivalence, ambiguity and complexity.” That’s for sure. Obama has constantly slammed Hillary for her vote on the Iraq war. His refrain has been that from the beginning he was against the war. And yet, at the time the vote was taken he did not have to vote. He could not have voted. He didn’t have to confront the ambivalence, ambiguity and complexity that our Congresspersons were faced with at that time. But now, as Dowd says, “he was finally confronted by a problem that neither his charm nor his grandiosity would solve.” He has finally entered that grey area where politicians spend 95% of their time. Dowd signs off with this: “Leaders don’t need to be messiahs. Gray is a welcome relief from black and white.” I could not agree more.