Post #170
Subject: John W. McCain and his Social Security Problem
Retire: To withdraw oneself from business, public life, or active service.
I thought you had to be retired in order to collect Social Security. I also thought when you collected Social Security you could only work a certain amount of hours. Isn't the President of the United States a full-time job? :p
Republican Presidential candidate John McCain cashes his monthly Social Security checks despite calling the federal program "a disgrace," the Associated Press reports. McCain gets $1,930 a month from a ”broken” Social Security system. “I'm receiving benefits," McCain told campaign reporters, but added, "the system is broken."
In 2007, he received benefits of $23,157 from Social Security, approximately $1,930 a month. The maximum monthly benefit under Social Security is $2,185. Social Security benefits are determined by age at retirement.
McCain, who is 71, has received benefits since he was 65 – despite NOT retiring.
Whoops [blush] – McCain IS retired from the military. When McCain released his tax return for 2007, he separately disclosed that he received a pension of $58,358 that was not listed as income on his return.
McCain’s staff identified the retirement benefit as a "disability pension" and said that McCain "was retired as disabled because of his limited body movements due to injuries as a POW." Certain types of military and veterans pensions are either partially or completely tax-exempt, depending on the seriousness of the disability. In McCain’s case, the exemption is 100 percent. If McCain had to pay taxes on the full amount of the pension, it would have increased his tax bill by about $18,000 based on the percentage of his income he paid to the federal government.
McCain has long said he is in robust health and is strong enough to hike the Grand Canyon, but he also is receiving what his staff termed a "disability pension" from the Navy. If he is 100% disabled then he certainly shouldn't be running for President! :p
McCain told observers at a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio, "Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers ... and that's a disgrace." No, not a disgrace. Indeed, that's what family and community is all about - and that's why the Social Security contract cements the bond between young and old. The disgrace is a wealthy freeloader like McCain who obviously doesn’t need it with his snout in the trough. McCain's wife Cindy has a net worth of approximately $100 million.
My Grandma, 87, gets about 1/5 of what McCain does – and that IS her income. Social Security Insurance works well in doing what it was designed to do – providing insurance in case ya mess up your own retirement plans… or lack thereof. Government is NOT in charge of your retirement. Government keeps my Grandma from eating cat food.
Republicans are always complaining about too much government, welfare queens, government hand-outs, and praising self-sufficiency, rugged individualism, ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,’ but they need to walk the talk. Weasels like McCain have been living off big government all their lives and have never held jobs in private industry. Yet, they're the first to condemn any sort of program which is designed to assist the lower wage workers – low-interest college loans, increases in the minimum wage, health insurance, or greater regulations of some corporate behavior – while benefiting themselves
The point is not that McCain isn't entitled to the Social Security money. The point is that he hypocritically derides Social Security as a "disgrace" but fails to set an example to other multi-millionaires that the system would be benefited greatly if those not needing the money would refuse it. If every multi-millionaire stopped taking the money they don't actually need and gave it to the poor or those without health insurance, think what good that would do!
B.J. Jarrett from the Social Security Administration said that individuals can refuse retirement benefits.
… from another blog: “When McCain began receiving Social Security retirement benefits at age 65, 4 of his children were also eligible for benefits. Children under age 18 are eligible for benefits on a retired beneficiary's record. Four of his children were 17,15,13 and 10 when he began resceiving Social Security benefits. One child, Bridget, is still under 18 and presumably still receiving benefits (half her dad's benefit rate or $965/month in 2007). With the 2.3% cost of living increase in January, 2008, McCain's current benefit probably exceeds $1974/month. His 2007 high earnings probably increased his benefits to an even higher benefit rate in his computation. His daughter gets 1/2 or $987 plus a month. His wife is also eligible for spouse's benefits for having an underage daughter in her care. His wife probably earns too much to collect that benefit though. However, if all her income is from investments and she has no wages or self employment earnings, she could draw another $987/month.
“Isn't it wonderful that Senator McCain is criticizing a program that his family benefits from to the tune of $36,000 to $48,000 this year? This is after having collected over $200,000 in family benefits in the previous 6 years.
“The pay as you go system which he criticizes has always been the basis of Social Security. Current wage earners pay for current beneficiaries. This system has succeeded in virtually eliminating poverty for senior citizens in the United States. This is the system that has helped enrich McCain and his family. This is the system that has allowed the McCain family to collect far more in benefits than he paid in taxes.
“It doesn't stop there. In his first marriage, Senator McCain's wife became disabled and, assuming she had worked sufficiently under Social Security, drew Social Security disability benefits. Since the McCain's had 3 young children, they would have been eligible for benefits as children under age 18 of a disabled beneficiary. In fact, at the time of her disability, children were eligible for benefits up to age 22 if they were full time students. So McCain family #1 may very well have had an opportunity to have Social Security defray a large portion of his children's college expenses. SSA benefits also lessened the burden on Mr. McCain's obligations to support his children from his 1st marriage after his divorce.
“The level of benefits that the McCains have received from Social Security is astounding. And he wants to dismantle the program that provided his family such substantial benefits?”
Friday, August 08, 2008
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Post #169
Subject: John W. McCain knows how to win wars.
Oh, really?
I’ve heard John W. McCain say over and over “I know how to win wars, I know how to win wars.” – as tho repetition makes it so. Can he cite an example of a war that he’s won either as a soldier or as an architect?
I’m sure that he’ll say, as a lowly soldier, it was not his responsibility to win Vietnam – true. I’m also sure that he’ll say, as an architect, it was George W. Bush who screwed up Iraq – true, too. But doesn’t that – being an architect for the incompetent Bush – raise questions about judgment?
Still, the question remains, can he cite an example of a war that he’s won either as a soldier or as an architect? It seems that McCain really only knows how to LOSE wars. :p
The good thing about blogging is that, uh, politically incorrect questions can be raised without worry about what some bobblehead on Faux News will say. Ya know, the Main Stream Media is just too lax when it comes to obvious questions.
For example, McCain keeps citing the “new strategy “ that’s working in Iraq and will work in Afghanistan. Well, what “new strategy” – specifically? What is it we are now doing in Iraq, and why will that strategy work in Afghanistan?
I thought that the historical lesson of Vietnam was that we should not have been there in the first place – that will undoubtedly be the historical lesson of Iraq, too. I thought the secondary lesson of Vietnam was ‘commit the country BEFORE committing the troops’ – that will undoubtedly be the secondary lesson of Iraq, too. How does McCain plan to commit the country at this late date? If he can’t – say, the people’s representatives in Congress cut off his money, what will he do?
Subject: John W. McCain knows how to win wars.
Oh, really?
I’ve heard John W. McCain say over and over “I know how to win wars, I know how to win wars.” – as tho repetition makes it so. Can he cite an example of a war that he’s won either as a soldier or as an architect?
I’m sure that he’ll say, as a lowly soldier, it was not his responsibility to win Vietnam – true. I’m also sure that he’ll say, as an architect, it was George W. Bush who screwed up Iraq – true, too. But doesn’t that – being an architect for the incompetent Bush – raise questions about judgment?
Still, the question remains, can he cite an example of a war that he’s won either as a soldier or as an architect? It seems that McCain really only knows how to LOSE wars. :p
The good thing about blogging is that, uh, politically incorrect questions can be raised without worry about what some bobblehead on Faux News will say. Ya know, the Main Stream Media is just too lax when it comes to obvious questions.
For example, McCain keeps citing the “new strategy “ that’s working in Iraq and will work in Afghanistan. Well, what “new strategy” – specifically? What is it we are now doing in Iraq, and why will that strategy work in Afghanistan?
I thought that the historical lesson of Vietnam was that we should not have been there in the first place – that will undoubtedly be the historical lesson of Iraq, too. I thought the secondary lesson of Vietnam was ‘commit the country BEFORE committing the troops’ – that will undoubtedly be the secondary lesson of Iraq, too. How does McCain plan to commit the country at this late date? If he can’t – say, the people’s representatives in Congress cut off his money, what will he do?
Friday, August 01, 2008
Post #168
Subject: Is Anybody Listening?
… from the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center that does research for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the unified commands and other defense agencies.
http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/07/29/
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
News Release
Tuesday
July 29, 2008
U.S. Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida
Current U.S. strategy against the terrorist group al Qaida has not been successful in significantly undermining the group's capabilities, according to a new RAND Corporation study issued today.
Al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history and the group's attacks since then have spanned an increasingly broader range of targets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, according to researchers.
In looking at how other terrorist groups have ended, the RAND study found that most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members. Police and intelligence agencies, rather than the military, should be the tip of the spear against al Qaida in most of the world, and the United States should abandon the use of the phrase "war on terrorism," researchers concluded.
"The United States cannot conduct an effective long-term counterterrorism campaign against al Qaida or other terrorist groups without understanding how terrorist groups end," said Seth Jones, the study's lead author and a political scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument."
[Well, folks, ‘a new way forward’ from the minds of the RAND, a group of usually right-wing Nuts! :p This is not Daddy’s ol’ friends telling George W. Bush that he is wrong – this is the best and the brightest saying what Bush – and John W. McCain or Barak Obama – need to do in the future to fight al-Qaeda. After all, isn’t al-Qaeda our #1 enemy?]
The comprehensive study analyzes 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006, drawing from a terrorism database maintained by RAND and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The most common way that terrorist groups end -- 43 percent -- was via a transition to the political process. However, the possibility of a political solution is more likely if the group has narrow goals, rather than a broad, sweeping agenda like al Qaida possesses.
The second most common way that terrorist groups end -- 40 percent -- was through police and intelligence services either apprehending or killing the key leaders of these groups. Policing is especially effective in dealing with terrorists because police have a permanent presence in cities that enables them to efficiently gather information, Jones said.
Military force was effective in only 7 percent of the cases examined; in most instances, military force is too blunt an instrument to be successful against terrorist groups, although it can be useful for quelling insurgencies in which the terrorist groups are large, well-armed and well-organized, according to researchers. In a number of cases, the groups end because they become splintered, with members joining other groups or forming new factions. Terrorist groups achieved victory in only 10 percent of the cases studied.
Jones says the study has crucial implications for U.S. strategy in dealing with al Qaida and other terrorist groups. Since al Qaida's goal is the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate, a political solution or negotiated settlement with governments in the Middle East is highly unlikely. The terrorist organization also has made numerous enemies and does not enjoy the kind of mass support received by other organizations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, largely because al Qaida has not engaged in sponsoring any welfare services, medical clinics, or hospitals.
The study recommends the United States should adopt a two-front strategy: rely on policing and intelligence work to root out the terrorist leaders in Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, and involve military force -- though not necessarily the U.S. military -- when insurgencies are involved.
The United States also should avoid the use of the term, "war on terror," and replace it with the term "counterterrorism." Nearly every U.S. ally, including the United Kingdom and Australia, has stopped using "war on terror," and Jones said it's more than a mere matter of semantics.
"The term we use to describe our strategy toward terrorists is important, because it affects what kinds of forces you use," Jones said. "Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
[This is your taxdollars at work, peeps. I wonder if that report is being shuffled around the halls of official Washington -- and being read by the two campaigns.]
Among the other findings, the study notes:
Religious terrorist groups take longer to eliminate than other groups. Since 1968, approximately 62 percent of all terrorist groups have ended, while only 32 percent of religious terrorist groups have done so.
No religious terrorist group has achieved victory since 1968.
Size is an important predictor of a groups' fate. Large groups of more than 10,000 members have been victorious more than 25 percent of the time, while victory is rare when groups are smaller than 1,000 members.
There is no statistical correlation between the duration of a terrorist group and ideological motivation, economic conditions, regime type or the breadth of terrorist goals.
Terrorist groups that become involved in an insurgency do not end easily. Nearly 50 percent of the time they end with a negotiated settlement with the government, 25 percent of the time they achieved victory and 19 percent of the time, military groups defeated them.
Terrorist groups from upper-income countries are much more likely to be left-wing or nationalistic, and much less likely to be motivated by religion.
"The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al Qaida, it just needs to shift its strategy and keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight," Jones said.
[The reason that John W. McCain is having a hard time explaining a positive vision for the future is that he sees no positive future. Wars in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq with Syria on notice; al-Qaeda strengthening; oil wells off the coast; a Constitutional crisis as Congress tries to cut off money for McCain’s war machine – the future according to McCain. Ya know, I bet he likes it!]
The study, "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qaida," can be found at http://www.rand.org/ .
Subject: Is Anybody Listening?
… from the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center that does research for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the unified commands and other defense agencies.
http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/07/29/
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
News Release
Tuesday
July 29, 2008
U.S. Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida
Current U.S. strategy against the terrorist group al Qaida has not been successful in significantly undermining the group's capabilities, according to a new RAND Corporation study issued today.
Al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history and the group's attacks since then have spanned an increasingly broader range of targets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, according to researchers.
In looking at how other terrorist groups have ended, the RAND study found that most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members. Police and intelligence agencies, rather than the military, should be the tip of the spear against al Qaida in most of the world, and the United States should abandon the use of the phrase "war on terrorism," researchers concluded.
"The United States cannot conduct an effective long-term counterterrorism campaign against al Qaida or other terrorist groups without understanding how terrorist groups end," said Seth Jones, the study's lead author and a political scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument."
[Well, folks, ‘a new way forward’ from the minds of the RAND, a group of usually right-wing Nuts! :p This is not Daddy’s ol’ friends telling George W. Bush that he is wrong – this is the best and the brightest saying what Bush – and John W. McCain or Barak Obama – need to do in the future to fight al-Qaeda. After all, isn’t al-Qaeda our #1 enemy?]
The comprehensive study analyzes 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006, drawing from a terrorism database maintained by RAND and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The most common way that terrorist groups end -- 43 percent -- was via a transition to the political process. However, the possibility of a political solution is more likely if the group has narrow goals, rather than a broad, sweeping agenda like al Qaida possesses.
The second most common way that terrorist groups end -- 40 percent -- was through police and intelligence services either apprehending or killing the key leaders of these groups. Policing is especially effective in dealing with terrorists because police have a permanent presence in cities that enables them to efficiently gather information, Jones said.
Military force was effective in only 7 percent of the cases examined; in most instances, military force is too blunt an instrument to be successful against terrorist groups, although it can be useful for quelling insurgencies in which the terrorist groups are large, well-armed and well-organized, according to researchers. In a number of cases, the groups end because they become splintered, with members joining other groups or forming new factions. Terrorist groups achieved victory in only 10 percent of the cases studied.
Jones says the study has crucial implications for U.S. strategy in dealing with al Qaida and other terrorist groups. Since al Qaida's goal is the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate, a political solution or negotiated settlement with governments in the Middle East is highly unlikely. The terrorist organization also has made numerous enemies and does not enjoy the kind of mass support received by other organizations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, largely because al Qaida has not engaged in sponsoring any welfare services, medical clinics, or hospitals.
The study recommends the United States should adopt a two-front strategy: rely on policing and intelligence work to root out the terrorist leaders in Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, and involve military force -- though not necessarily the U.S. military -- when insurgencies are involved.
The United States also should avoid the use of the term, "war on terror," and replace it with the term "counterterrorism." Nearly every U.S. ally, including the United Kingdom and Australia, has stopped using "war on terror," and Jones said it's more than a mere matter of semantics.
"The term we use to describe our strategy toward terrorists is important, because it affects what kinds of forces you use," Jones said. "Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
[This is your taxdollars at work, peeps. I wonder if that report is being shuffled around the halls of official Washington -- and being read by the two campaigns.]
Among the other findings, the study notes:
Religious terrorist groups take longer to eliminate than other groups. Since 1968, approximately 62 percent of all terrorist groups have ended, while only 32 percent of religious terrorist groups have done so.
No religious terrorist group has achieved victory since 1968.
Size is an important predictor of a groups' fate. Large groups of more than 10,000 members have been victorious more than 25 percent of the time, while victory is rare when groups are smaller than 1,000 members.
There is no statistical correlation between the duration of a terrorist group and ideological motivation, economic conditions, regime type or the breadth of terrorist goals.
Terrorist groups that become involved in an insurgency do not end easily. Nearly 50 percent of the time they end with a negotiated settlement with the government, 25 percent of the time they achieved victory and 19 percent of the time, military groups defeated them.
Terrorist groups from upper-income countries are much more likely to be left-wing or nationalistic, and much less likely to be motivated by religion.
"The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al Qaida, it just needs to shift its strategy and keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight," Jones said.
[The reason that John W. McCain is having a hard time explaining a positive vision for the future is that he sees no positive future. Wars in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq with Syria on notice; al-Qaeda strengthening; oil wells off the coast; a Constitutional crisis as Congress tries to cut off money for McCain’s war machine – the future according to McCain. Ya know, I bet he likes it!]
The study, "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qaida," can be found at http://www.rand.org/ .
Friday, July 25, 2008
Post #167
Subject: Let's Talk Troop Surge
… from The American Conservative:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
Who Wants To Talk About Troop Strain?
July 23, 2008 by Kelley Vlahos
Like every other VIP that’s flown into the Green Zone for the dog & pony-grip & grin, Barack Obama was transported safely from Iraq 48 hours later, leaving tens of thousands of US troops behind. In his wake, the media attention and with it, the mind-numbing debate over timelines and time horizons and status of forces agreements will eventually give way to more pressing issues for these troops whose main contact with home is a tiny camera assisting their email: how to pay the bills, kids acting out in school, the baby on the way.
But the image of Obama and his media pack flying away is indeed symbolic in that lost in the bloodless debate over whether soldiers and Marines should be coming home now or later, at fixed dates or after “aspirational goals” are met, is that experts, including top Army officials, have been saying for over a year that the current force strength cannot keep up with today’s deployment schedule without breaking the service and the men and women in it.
[Yep. I began this blog two years ago because I thought the Army was at a breaking point and therefore George W. Bush’s Napoleonic vision was ending, and I wanted to take a few swipes at the Weasel. I didn’t anticipate the Weasel extending tours of duties and lowering recruiting standards and sacrificing more blood and treasure so that he can hand-off his War to the next President – who undoubtedly will get blamed by Bush for losing Iraq.]
In fact, it seems that talking about the true state of our force strength has become nothing but a strange exercise in denial, with a little smoke and mirrors to keep the American people distracted. The surge allowed for adding five brigades to the existing 15 in Iraq back in March of ‘07. Now that the surge is technically over, those five brigades have been coming home, and will be out of Iraq by the end of the month, according to military officials. That leaves the force strength the same, if not slightly higher than when the surge began – about 140,000 troops. President Bush has said there will be no further draw-downs until conditions improve more. Though there is always the tease – part of the smoke and mirrors component – of future withdrawals, we wait endlessly for something more official.
As I wrote for TAC back in June, many believe that the surge was ended not so much for its tactical successes, but because the brigades had to come home. The 15-month deployments and close to 1:1 deployment/dwell time ratio is and was untenable (the healthiest would be 1:4 and that is a fantasy in today’s war). Retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan told me at the time, “We cannot replace them out there without a full mobilization, without total access to the reserve and the National Guard. In the situation now, we cannot do that – we either have to change our strategy or make our Army bigger.”
While the Army and Marine Corps have orders by Bush to grow by 92,000 by 2012, they can hardly expect to start supplying fresh troops and Marines to the battlefield today. As it were, no less than 13 National Guard brigades have already been called up for (re)deployment to Iraq through 2009, ostensibly to replace exhausted active duty components there now.
To be fair, the centerpiece of Obama’s campaign is to bring most troops home within 16 months. However, much of this talk these days is balanced out by his desire to send more troops into Afghanistan. Even worse, say critics Larry Korb and Fred Kaplan, John McCain’s plan not only excludes a timeline for drawing down troops in Iraq, but putting even more troops than Obama envisions in Afghanistan.
Kaplan: Here’s the problem: The U.S. Army is stretched so thin that, according to its own calculations, no extra combat units can be sent to Afghanistan unless the same number of units is pulled out of Iraq. There is no flexibility here. So if McCain wants to put three more brigades in Afghanistan, where is he going to get them?
Referring to Obama’s call for withdrawing troops from Iraq, McCain says, “Sen. Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq.”
Cute, but beside the point. Military strategy involves the application of resources to war aims. If McCain wins the White House, the first thing the Joint Chiefs will tell him is that they don’t have the resources to fulfill his war aims.
[When will McCain ‘straight-talk’ the American people about the sacrifices needed for his war machine? Extended tours? Recruits from prison? A draft? The war machine will need to be even bigger if/when Israel drags us into war with Iran. Will that ‘straight-talk’ come BEFORE the election?]
Korb, with Laura Conley: Sen. McCain’s policy does not account for the strain placed on U.S. forces due to repeated deployments. Of the nearly 1.7 million U.S. soldiers who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq, almost 600,000 have been deployed more than once. As the large U.S. presence in Iraq continues to require repeated deployments, often with insufficient time between tours of duty, the ability of the military to provide significant numbers of combat-ready forces for Afghanistan is diminished.
Increasing security in Afghanistan must be the primary, though not sole priority of the United States. U.S. policy in Afghanistan can and must be revitalized with a commitment to building Afghan government capacity, reining in corruption, increasing reconstruction efforts, removing the terrorist safe haven in Pakistan, and reducing the production of opium.
[Terrorists need to understand that the long arm of swift and sure American justice will get ‘em. I doubt that message is getting thro to those safe havens in Pakistan. The War on Terror can not even begin as long as 9/11 masterminds are on the loose – I hope you-know-who doesn’t die peacefully in his sleep.]
As usual, as these guys point out, the human side of the debate gets lost, particularly in jargon like “aspirational goals,” but let’s get serious here: tens of thousands of men and women have been repeatedly deploying in and out of this warzone for six years, on stints that last anywhere from seven to 18 month each, depending on their branch of service and when they were deployed. Their individual commitments rival, if not exceed, that of their counterparts in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, yet this aspect of the war seems to get lost. Leave the brigades, take out the brigades, transfer the brigades, bring home the brigades – we have to remember there are people involved. As it stands today, 4,125 servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq, 33,000 wounded in action (that doesn’t include tens of thousands of non-hostile injuries and illnesses); 560 killed in Afghanistan. Many lives have been put on hold for the better part of this decade, and, at least now, with no end in sight.
I was struck by the resignation in the tone of one soldier interviewed by the Washingn Post earlier this week on the success of the surge. Asked if the surge worth it, Spec. Derek Taylor, 23of West Virginia, “It was worth it, and it was not worth it – I have a wife and a kid. I go home, and my daughter is 2. She probably doesn’t remember who I am.”
Subject: Let's Talk Troop Surge
… from The American Conservative:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
Who Wants To Talk About Troop Strain?
July 23, 2008 by Kelley Vlahos
Like every other VIP that’s flown into the Green Zone for the dog & pony-grip & grin, Barack Obama was transported safely from Iraq 48 hours later, leaving tens of thousands of US troops behind. In his wake, the media attention and with it, the mind-numbing debate over timelines and time horizons and status of forces agreements will eventually give way to more pressing issues for these troops whose main contact with home is a tiny camera assisting their email: how to pay the bills, kids acting out in school, the baby on the way.
But the image of Obama and his media pack flying away is indeed symbolic in that lost in the bloodless debate over whether soldiers and Marines should be coming home now or later, at fixed dates or after “aspirational goals” are met, is that experts, including top Army officials, have been saying for over a year that the current force strength cannot keep up with today’s deployment schedule without breaking the service and the men and women in it.
[Yep. I began this blog two years ago because I thought the Army was at a breaking point and therefore George W. Bush’s Napoleonic vision was ending, and I wanted to take a few swipes at the Weasel. I didn’t anticipate the Weasel extending tours of duties and lowering recruiting standards and sacrificing more blood and treasure so that he can hand-off his War to the next President – who undoubtedly will get blamed by Bush for losing Iraq.]
In fact, it seems that talking about the true state of our force strength has become nothing but a strange exercise in denial, with a little smoke and mirrors to keep the American people distracted. The surge allowed for adding five brigades to the existing 15 in Iraq back in March of ‘07. Now that the surge is technically over, those five brigades have been coming home, and will be out of Iraq by the end of the month, according to military officials. That leaves the force strength the same, if not slightly higher than when the surge began – about 140,000 troops. President Bush has said there will be no further draw-downs until conditions improve more. Though there is always the tease – part of the smoke and mirrors component – of future withdrawals, we wait endlessly for something more official.
As I wrote for TAC back in June, many believe that the surge was ended not so much for its tactical successes, but because the brigades had to come home. The 15-month deployments and close to 1:1 deployment/dwell time ratio is and was untenable (the healthiest would be 1:4 and that is a fantasy in today’s war). Retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan told me at the time, “We cannot replace them out there without a full mobilization, without total access to the reserve and the National Guard. In the situation now, we cannot do that – we either have to change our strategy or make our Army bigger.”
While the Army and Marine Corps have orders by Bush to grow by 92,000 by 2012, they can hardly expect to start supplying fresh troops and Marines to the battlefield today. As it were, no less than 13 National Guard brigades have already been called up for (re)deployment to Iraq through 2009, ostensibly to replace exhausted active duty components there now.
To be fair, the centerpiece of Obama’s campaign is to bring most troops home within 16 months. However, much of this talk these days is balanced out by his desire to send more troops into Afghanistan. Even worse, say critics Larry Korb and Fred Kaplan, John McCain’s plan not only excludes a timeline for drawing down troops in Iraq, but putting even more troops than Obama envisions in Afghanistan.
Kaplan: Here’s the problem: The U.S. Army is stretched so thin that, according to its own calculations, no extra combat units can be sent to Afghanistan unless the same number of units is pulled out of Iraq. There is no flexibility here. So if McCain wants to put three more brigades in Afghanistan, where is he going to get them?
Referring to Obama’s call for withdrawing troops from Iraq, McCain says, “Sen. Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq.”
Cute, but beside the point. Military strategy involves the application of resources to war aims. If McCain wins the White House, the first thing the Joint Chiefs will tell him is that they don’t have the resources to fulfill his war aims.
[When will McCain ‘straight-talk’ the American people about the sacrifices needed for his war machine? Extended tours? Recruits from prison? A draft? The war machine will need to be even bigger if/when Israel drags us into war with Iran. Will that ‘straight-talk’ come BEFORE the election?]
Korb, with Laura Conley: Sen. McCain’s policy does not account for the strain placed on U.S. forces due to repeated deployments. Of the nearly 1.7 million U.S. soldiers who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq, almost 600,000 have been deployed more than once. As the large U.S. presence in Iraq continues to require repeated deployments, often with insufficient time between tours of duty, the ability of the military to provide significant numbers of combat-ready forces for Afghanistan is diminished.
Increasing security in Afghanistan must be the primary, though not sole priority of the United States. U.S. policy in Afghanistan can and must be revitalized with a commitment to building Afghan government capacity, reining in corruption, increasing reconstruction efforts, removing the terrorist safe haven in Pakistan, and reducing the production of opium.
[Terrorists need to understand that the long arm of swift and sure American justice will get ‘em. I doubt that message is getting thro to those safe havens in Pakistan. The War on Terror can not even begin as long as 9/11 masterminds are on the loose – I hope you-know-who doesn’t die peacefully in his sleep.]
As usual, as these guys point out, the human side of the debate gets lost, particularly in jargon like “aspirational goals,” but let’s get serious here: tens of thousands of men and women have been repeatedly deploying in and out of this warzone for six years, on stints that last anywhere from seven to 18 month each, depending on their branch of service and when they were deployed. Their individual commitments rival, if not exceed, that of their counterparts in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, yet this aspect of the war seems to get lost. Leave the brigades, take out the brigades, transfer the brigades, bring home the brigades – we have to remember there are people involved. As it stands today, 4,125 servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq, 33,000 wounded in action (that doesn’t include tens of thousands of non-hostile injuries and illnesses); 560 killed in Afghanistan. Many lives have been put on hold for the better part of this decade, and, at least now, with no end in sight.
I was struck by the resignation in the tone of one soldier interviewed by the Washingn Post earlier this week on the success of the surge. Asked if the surge worth it, Spec. Derek Taylor, 23of West Virginia, “It was worth it, and it was not worth it – I have a wife and a kid. I go home, and my daughter is 2. She probably doesn’t remember who I am.”
Friday, July 18, 2008
Post #166
Subject: Antonin Scalia, Naked Under his Robes
There used to be a lone voice of solid reasoning that thundered across the political landscape – this is a nation of laws, not of men. Respect for what is written in the Constitution is paramount. But that changed in 2000.
If ever there was one case that the U.S. Supreme Court should have stayed out of, it was Bush v. Gore. Our election for President is not a national election – if it was, Al Gore would have won. But our election is a series of state elections with each state determining its own rules as ultimately interpreted by that state’s Supreme Court – not the U.S. Supreme Court.
The irony is that, if played out according to the law, George W. Bush would have won legitimately. Instead, we have an illegitimate President who was inflicted upon us by Antonin Scalia.
Recently, I saw a TV interview with Scalia and was hoping for a reasonable explanation. Instead, when asked why the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, he answered “the way it was presented, it was a Constitutional problem.” Well, yes or no. Goodness, anything can be presented as a Constitutional problem -- the Supreme Court decides what is or is not a Constitutional problem.
Scalia then went on and said that he considered public opinion, that the public was impatient for a new President. What does public opinion have to do with deciding a case before the U.S. Supreme Court? To Scalia, it is important.
Not only is public opinion important to Scalia, but he also cited world public opinion as a reason the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in Bush v Gore. Scalia was worried that a foreign newspaper – French? – might make fun of the world’s leading democracy when we had to follow the law to determine our President.
Uh, I thought following the law was what a democracy was all about.
Of course, still today, Scalia is wandering… out there. Take, for instance, the recent D.C. gun ban case and show me “self-defense” written in the Constitution. Scalia made convincing arguments as to why the ban was bad policy, but he had to rely on “original intent” as a way to describe the ban as un-Constitutional – that is, he guessed as to what the founders meant so that he could impose his own agenda on the country instead of relying on what is written in the Constitution. Isn’t that known as “legislating from the bench?”
Antonin Scalia – another one. * sigh *
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Post #165
Subject: I get e-mails. Pt. II
I got another “Fwd” e-mail the other day about recent anti-terror doings in Australia and how we needed leaders like those in Australia. Well, the e-mail was NOT entirely true. Read the findings at snopes.com,
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/australia.asp
and see that what really happened – kewl, by the way – has been combined with an editorial from a military magazine. What tipped me off – encouraged me to look – was the reference to a Christian nation. Australia was a penal colony – drunkards, murderers, rapists, the dregs of British society. I doubt there were many Christians among the founders.
That e-mail had been “Fwd” to thousands. I wish peeps would check snopes.com BEFORE hitting “Fwd.“ * sigh *
Subject: I get e-mails. Pt. II
I got another “Fwd” e-mail the other day about recent anti-terror doings in Australia and how we needed leaders like those in Australia. Well, the e-mail was NOT entirely true. Read the findings at snopes.com,
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/australia.asp
and see that what really happened – kewl, by the way – has been combined with an editorial from a military magazine. What tipped me off – encouraged me to look – was the reference to a Christian nation. Australia was a penal colony – drunkards, murderers, rapists, the dregs of British society. I doubt there were many Christians among the founders.
That e-mail had been “Fwd” to thousands. I wish peeps would check snopes.com BEFORE hitting “Fwd.“ * sigh *
Friday, July 11, 2008
Post #164
Subject: War Is Over! We Won!!
We Won!! War Is Over! There’ll be dancing, dancing in the streets. Newborn babies will be named “W.”
George W. Bush is a supergenius – he had the courage to surge when EVRYBODY told him not too. And the surge has worked, fulfilling its original promise of providing breathing room for the Iraqi government to get its act together.
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Monday that his country wants some type of timetable for a withdrawal of American troops included in the deal the two countries are negotiating. It was the first time that he has explicitly and publicly called for a withdrawal timetable.
In Washington, the State Department declined to comment on the ongoing negotiations and said officials in Washington were not yet entirely sure what al-Maliki had said. "This falls in the category of ongoing negotiations, and I'm not going to talk about every single development, every single development in the negotiations," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
Maliki offered no details. But his national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, told The Associated Press the next day “We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn’t have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq.”
What does John W. McCain think?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN W. MCCAIN: It’s obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policies are based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Whoops – wrong tape [blush] – that was McCain from 2004. Tuesday morning on MSNBC, McCain was asked about Maliki’s demand that the U.S., at least, make plans to go home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, MORNING JOE)
MCCAIN: The Iraqis have made it very clear including meetings I had with the president and foreign minister of Iraq that it’s based on conditions on the ground. That’s what I’ve always said. I’ve always said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable.
The same media outlets, by the way, were saying two weeks ago that Maliki said there would be no Status of Forces Agreement. But he is a politician; he is a leader of a country that’s finally coming together. There is no reason to assume that the Iraqis aren’t going to act in what they perceive as their national interests.
I believe we’ll act in ours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
There it is, peeps – our commitment to democracy is a sham. McCain has flip-flopped, moved the goalposts, snatched defeat from the jaws of Victory. Instead of Bush and McCain admitting their War was wrong, they’d rather set America on the course for a s-l-o-w suicide. What patriots.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA: So when I hear John McCain saying, ‘We can’t surrender, we can’t wave the white flag’ nobody’s talking about surrender. We’re talking about common sense. We cannot be there forever.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: We can’t be there for 50 years. We can’t afford it. Our military families can’t bear that burden. We’ve got to get more troops into Afghanistan. I am going to bring this war to an end.
So, don’t be confused. I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I’m president of the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Subject: War Is Over! We Won!!
We Won!! War Is Over! There’ll be dancing, dancing in the streets. Newborn babies will be named “W.”
George W. Bush is a supergenius – he had the courage to surge when EVRYBODY told him not too. And the surge has worked, fulfilling its original promise of providing breathing room for the Iraqi government to get its act together.
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Monday that his country wants some type of timetable for a withdrawal of American troops included in the deal the two countries are negotiating. It was the first time that he has explicitly and publicly called for a withdrawal timetable.
In Washington, the State Department declined to comment on the ongoing negotiations and said officials in Washington were not yet entirely sure what al-Maliki had said. "This falls in the category of ongoing negotiations, and I'm not going to talk about every single development, every single development in the negotiations," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
Maliki offered no details. But his national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, told The Associated Press the next day “We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn’t have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq.”
What does John W. McCain think?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN W. MCCAIN: It’s obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policies are based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Whoops – wrong tape [blush] – that was McCain from 2004. Tuesday morning on MSNBC, McCain was asked about Maliki’s demand that the U.S., at least, make plans to go home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, MORNING JOE)
MCCAIN: The Iraqis have made it very clear including meetings I had with the president and foreign minister of Iraq that it’s based on conditions on the ground. That’s what I’ve always said. I’ve always said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable.
The same media outlets, by the way, were saying two weeks ago that Maliki said there would be no Status of Forces Agreement. But he is a politician; he is a leader of a country that’s finally coming together. There is no reason to assume that the Iraqis aren’t going to act in what they perceive as their national interests.
I believe we’ll act in ours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
There it is, peeps – our commitment to democracy is a sham. McCain has flip-flopped, moved the goalposts, snatched defeat from the jaws of Victory. Instead of Bush and McCain admitting their War was wrong, they’d rather set America on the course for a s-l-o-w suicide. What patriots.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA: So when I hear John McCain saying, ‘We can’t surrender, we can’t wave the white flag’ nobody’s talking about surrender. We’re talking about common sense. We cannot be there forever.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: We can’t be there for 50 years. We can’t afford it. Our military families can’t bear that burden. We’ve got to get more troops into Afghanistan. I am going to bring this war to an end.
So, don’t be confused. I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I’m president of the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Friday, July 04, 2008
Post #163
Subject: John McCain, patriot?
What we need, what this country needs, is someone who will stand up and tell us the truth. We need a patriot, someone who has seen war and will give us a little straight-talk about the Iraq War.
“A war that began dishonorably cannot end honorably – the only honor comes with the end.” Lying, cheating, misguided, foolhardy, whatever your favorite term is to describe the sales campaign for the Iraq War – I think we can all agree that it was dishonorable
Ya’d think John McCain would be the perfect candidate to take on that task. Unfortunately, McCain has learned the wrong lesson about Vietnam – he thinks one more push will be honorable, sacrificing more men for… what?
I thought that the historical lesson of Vietnam was that we should not have been there in the first place – that will undoubtedly be the historical lesson of Iraq, too. The last thing we need is a President who is wrestling with the ghosts of Vietnam.
Can we convince those who want to do us harm that there is a better way BEFORE they do us more harm? Can we win the hearts and minds of the jihadists? Not as long as we are in Iraq…. * sigh *
I’m depressed now – I’ve been blogging for two years, and we have a major Presidential candidate who just doesn’t get it: Continued investment in Iraq weakens our position in the War on Terror. I shudder to think what it will take for McCain to realize that simple truth.
Subject: John McCain, patriot?
What we need, what this country needs, is someone who will stand up and tell us the truth. We need a patriot, someone who has seen war and will give us a little straight-talk about the Iraq War.
“A war that began dishonorably cannot end honorably – the only honor comes with the end.” Lying, cheating, misguided, foolhardy, whatever your favorite term is to describe the sales campaign for the Iraq War – I think we can all agree that it was dishonorable
Ya’d think John McCain would be the perfect candidate to take on that task. Unfortunately, McCain has learned the wrong lesson about Vietnam – he thinks one more push will be honorable, sacrificing more men for… what?
I thought that the historical lesson of Vietnam was that we should not have been there in the first place – that will undoubtedly be the historical lesson of Iraq, too. The last thing we need is a President who is wrestling with the ghosts of Vietnam.
Can we convince those who want to do us harm that there is a better way BEFORE they do us more harm? Can we win the hearts and minds of the jihadists? Not as long as we are in Iraq…. * sigh *
I’m depressed now – I’ve been blogging for two years, and we have a major Presidential candidate who just doesn’t get it: Continued investment in Iraq weakens our position in the War on Terror. I shudder to think what it will take for McCain to realize that simple truth.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Post #162
Subject: Barack Obama, Where has the Magic Gone?
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
How Obama Won and May Win
By Pat Buchanan, http://www.theamericancause.org/
June 10, 2008
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Thus did Joe Biden famously describe his rival for the nomination, Barack Obama, to the The New York Observer, a year ago.
Biden, however, thought Obama might not be able to win the fall election, as he is “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate. I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.”
Biden was forced to apologize, but was dead on in discerning Barack’s strengths as a candidate in the primaries, which might prove weaknesses in the fall.
[Yep, Joe Biden was correct – and so was Hillary ‘he can’t win’ Clinton.]
A new face in the game, Barack opened with three aces. He opposed the Iraq war, the defining issue in a party that had come to detest the war. He was an African-American. Thus, as the hopes of millions rose that he could be the first black president, there were surges of black voters whom he begin to sweep 90-10.
Lastly, Barack is a natural, a Mickey Mantle, a superb political athlete like JFK, who has looks, charm, youth and a speaking style that can move crowds to cheers or laughter.
Barack was thus able to unite the McGovern wing – young, idealistic, liberal, anti-war -- with the Jesse Jackson quadrant of the party, black folks, and defeat Hillary’s coalition of working-class Catholics, women, seniors and Hispanics.
As of today, by the traditional metrics of national politics, Democrats should roll up a victory this fall like FDR’s first in 1932.
[My Grandma – 87 years old and feisty as Hell – could beat the crap out of John W. McCain. But we are gonna get him! [rolleyes] My hope is that we elect enough Democrats with ‘testicular fortitude’ to restore Congress’ proper role among the three branches of government – and reject any Scalias who are nominated.]
Bush’s disapproval is near 70 percent, and 80 percent of the country believes the nation is on the wrong course. Unemployment is rising. Surging gas and food prices compete for the top story not only on business pages but front pages, with home foreclosures and the housing slump. Family incomes of Middle Americans have ceased to rise, as millions of their best jobs have been outsourced overseas.
Yet, national polls show McCain-Obama a close race, and the electoral map points to critical problems for Barack.
He seeks, for example, to target Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. But in all three the Hispanic vote may be decisive. And Barack was beaten by Hillary two to one among Hispanics, and between these two largest of America’s minorities, rivalry and tension are real and rising.
Barack must hold Michigan and Pennsylvania and pick up Ohio or Virginia. Yet, his weakness among Southern and working-class whites and women is remarkable. By two to one they rejected him.
After his string of primary and caucus victories in February, Barack proceeded to lose Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, then West Virginia by 41, Kentucky by 35, Puerto Rico two to one and South Dakota by 10. That last one Barack was supposed to win.
The longer the campaign went on, the more reluctant Democrats seemed to be to embrace his nomination.
What is Barack’s problem?
Middle America knows little about him, and much of what they know they do not like. When West Virginians were asked what they knew about Barack, a plurality said the Rev. Wright was his pastor. In Pennsylvania, a goodly slice of Democrats knew Barack had said they were ‘bitter’ about being left behind and were clinging to their bigotries, Bibles and guns.
By June, resistance to Barack’s nomination in the party that he now leads was extraordinary, stemming from a belief that he is too naive to be commander in chief in wartime and too far left, and does not like or understand Middle America or its values.
“He is not one of us.”
And if Barack cannot erase this hardening perception in the American mind, he will not be president.
Democrats may talk of making the economy the issue this fall, but Republicans are going to make Barack the issue. Story line: We cannot entrust our beloved America, in a time of war, to this radical and exotic figure who has so many crazy and extremist associates.
Barack’s problem is thus Reagan’s problem.
As the country wished to be rid of Jimmy Carter in 1980, so the nation today wishes to be rid of Bush and his Republicans. But America is apprehensive over a roll of the dice, in Bill Clinton’s metaphor.
How did Reagan ease the anxiety? In the debate with Carter, he came off as conservative, yes, but also traditional, mainstream, witty and the more likable man. The real Reagan came through.
With his persona, Barack may be able to do the same – in the debates. The problem is that he had two dozen debates with Hillary and, by the end of the primary season, five months after it began, he was still losing ground.
[And to wait for the debates will be too late – negative perceptions will have hardened by then in this era of 24/7 news. Obama needs to show he is one of us.. BEFORE the convention. I heard that Obama’s mother was on welfare – he knows then what it is to struggle. Play that up, for Goodness sake.]
Subject: Barack Obama, Where has the Magic Gone?
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
How Obama Won and May Win
By Pat Buchanan, http://www.theamericancause.org/
June 10, 2008
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Thus did Joe Biden famously describe his rival for the nomination, Barack Obama, to the The New York Observer, a year ago.
Biden, however, thought Obama might not be able to win the fall election, as he is “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate. I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.”
Biden was forced to apologize, but was dead on in discerning Barack’s strengths as a candidate in the primaries, which might prove weaknesses in the fall.
[Yep, Joe Biden was correct – and so was Hillary ‘he can’t win’ Clinton.]
A new face in the game, Barack opened with three aces. He opposed the Iraq war, the defining issue in a party that had come to detest the war. He was an African-American. Thus, as the hopes of millions rose that he could be the first black president, there were surges of black voters whom he begin to sweep 90-10.
Lastly, Barack is a natural, a Mickey Mantle, a superb political athlete like JFK, who has looks, charm, youth and a speaking style that can move crowds to cheers or laughter.
Barack was thus able to unite the McGovern wing – young, idealistic, liberal, anti-war -- with the Jesse Jackson quadrant of the party, black folks, and defeat Hillary’s coalition of working-class Catholics, women, seniors and Hispanics.
As of today, by the traditional metrics of national politics, Democrats should roll up a victory this fall like FDR’s first in 1932.
[My Grandma – 87 years old and feisty as Hell – could beat the crap out of John W. McCain. But we are gonna get him! [rolleyes] My hope is that we elect enough Democrats with ‘testicular fortitude’ to restore Congress’ proper role among the three branches of government – and reject any Scalias who are nominated.]
Bush’s disapproval is near 70 percent, and 80 percent of the country believes the nation is on the wrong course. Unemployment is rising. Surging gas and food prices compete for the top story not only on business pages but front pages, with home foreclosures and the housing slump. Family incomes of Middle Americans have ceased to rise, as millions of their best jobs have been outsourced overseas.
Yet, national polls show McCain-Obama a close race, and the electoral map points to critical problems for Barack.
He seeks, for example, to target Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. But in all three the Hispanic vote may be decisive. And Barack was beaten by Hillary two to one among Hispanics, and between these two largest of America’s minorities, rivalry and tension are real and rising.
Barack must hold Michigan and Pennsylvania and pick up Ohio or Virginia. Yet, his weakness among Southern and working-class whites and women is remarkable. By two to one they rejected him.
After his string of primary and caucus victories in February, Barack proceeded to lose Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, then West Virginia by 41, Kentucky by 35, Puerto Rico two to one and South Dakota by 10. That last one Barack was supposed to win.
The longer the campaign went on, the more reluctant Democrats seemed to be to embrace his nomination.
What is Barack’s problem?
Middle America knows little about him, and much of what they know they do not like. When West Virginians were asked what they knew about Barack, a plurality said the Rev. Wright was his pastor. In Pennsylvania, a goodly slice of Democrats knew Barack had said they were ‘bitter’ about being left behind and were clinging to their bigotries, Bibles and guns.
By June, resistance to Barack’s nomination in the party that he now leads was extraordinary, stemming from a belief that he is too naive to be commander in chief in wartime and too far left, and does not like or understand Middle America or its values.
“He is not one of us.”
And if Barack cannot erase this hardening perception in the American mind, he will not be president.
Democrats may talk of making the economy the issue this fall, but Republicans are going to make Barack the issue. Story line: We cannot entrust our beloved America, in a time of war, to this radical and exotic figure who has so many crazy and extremist associates.
Barack’s problem is thus Reagan’s problem.
As the country wished to be rid of Jimmy Carter in 1980, so the nation today wishes to be rid of Bush and his Republicans. But America is apprehensive over a roll of the dice, in Bill Clinton’s metaphor.
How did Reagan ease the anxiety? In the debate with Carter, he came off as conservative, yes, but also traditional, mainstream, witty and the more likable man. The real Reagan came through.
With his persona, Barack may be able to do the same – in the debates. The problem is that he had two dozen debates with Hillary and, by the end of the primary season, five months after it began, he was still losing ground.
[And to wait for the debates will be too late – negative perceptions will have hardened by then in this era of 24/7 news. Obama needs to show he is one of us.. BEFORE the convention. I heard that Obama’s mother was on welfare – he knows then what it is to struggle. Play that up, for Goodness sake.]
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Post #161
Subject: What’s in a name?
Bay Buchanan, in my Post #160, said, “…Obama has a problem with patriotism. Then add that middle name. Point-Set-Match.” What does she mean?
Hussein – a Semitic name used by some of our staunchest Arab allies, the Husseins of Jordan. How is that a liability? Unless, of course, ya look down your nose and assume most Americans are stupid. :p
On the other side:
Sydney – a girl’s name for a girl, a ‘limp-wrist’ name for a boy. I’m sure the Republican can already kiss the homosexual vote ‘bye,’ but, the more his middle name gets played, he can kiss homophobes…’bye!’ :p
Subject: What’s in a name?
Bay Buchanan, in my Post #160, said, “…Obama has a problem with patriotism. Then add that middle name. Point-Set-Match.” What does she mean?
Hussein – a Semitic name used by some of our staunchest Arab allies, the Husseins of Jordan. How is that a liability? Unless, of course, ya look down your nose and assume most Americans are stupid. :p
On the other side:
Sydney – a girl’s name for a girl, a ‘limp-wrist’ name for a boy. I’m sure the Republican can already kiss the homosexual vote ‘bye,’ but, the more his middle name gets played, he can kiss homophobes…’bye!’ :p
Friday, June 13, 2008
Post #160
Subject: I like to read obscure articles on the 'net...
… and pretend that I have friends who share my interests! :p
I’m going to the beach next week. But I’ll be back. ‘Til then:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26814
“For or Against? “by Bay Buchanan
It’s finally over: the mother of all primaries has done her job reducing the field to two. But in reality there is only one candidate. Barack Obama. In November he will win or he will lose.
John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama. The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps. And while his strong suite is experience, especially on military matters, it was gained almost entirely in Washington, a city that 80% of Americans now believe has miserably misled and mismanaged the nation.
Since McCain has become the presumptive nominee, I have spoken at more than two dozen Republican gatherings. The sentiment everywhere can best be summarized in the words of one of the activists, “No matter who wins in November, we lose.”
Some pundits are suggesting that because Obama is having difficulty attracting Hillary’s women and Reagan Democrats that John McCain could pick them up. Not on the issues he can’t. Hillary’s women are big government feminists who are not going to be particularly impressed with McCain’s commitment to conservatives to appoint Scalia-like judges. (It was a commitment, wasn’t it?)
As for the Reagan Democrats they tend to be socially conservative, economically nationalist, working class white voters. McCain, on the other hand, continues to defend the very trade policies that have sent their jobs overseas. And he further alienated these Americans with his open border immigration policies that depressed their wages with cheap labor and ignored their plight while catering to the 20 million living here illegally.
So if he isn’t going to attract these voters with the issues and we know it won’t be with his charm, how does he do it? He doesn’t. Obama does.
As a candidate Obama is bigger than life. Die-hard liberals are euphoric over his nomination. He is seen as the real thing -- a man who believes what he says and says what he believes. His candidacy has mobilized millions of new voters, held massive rallies, and raised money faster than Federal Reserve can print it. Obama is a gifted candidate who has that intangible quality most candidates only dream about -- he moves voters -- which gives his campaign enormous energy and excitement. And he did this all the while fighting and eventually slaying the dragon lady herself!
But can he unite the Democrats? Hillary’s women are furious; they shared their candidate’s sense of entitlement and believe she was cheated out of the nomination. Also within the party there is so much tension between the blacks and the Hispanics that there is a rising concern the Hispanics may not vote for Obama because of the color of his skin. (Isn’t this called racism? Or is it only racism if Republicans are involved?) Obama may pay the price for a party built on dividing America one special interest group at a time.
But even before the uniting can begin Obama needs to regain his voice, reenergize his troops, and recapture the magic. His campaign sputtered across the finish line after weeks of appearing struck in first gear. There was no sign of the magic that was once his trademark.
His greatest challenge, however, is dealing with his inexperience. It makes him vulnerable on two fronts. First inexperience leads to mistakes -- as in Obama’s remark before the Pennsylvania primary about bitter voters clinging to God and guns.
Equally important, inexperienced candidates are generally not defined in the minds of the public. This presents a valuable opportunity for opponents to do the defining. (Remember the ACLU card-carrying liberal governor who released violent criminals onto the streets?) Americans like new and fresh but if they develop serious reservations they will fall back to the default candidate rather than role the dice.
Thanks to Hillary and the church that keeps on giving, Chicago’s Trinity United, reservations now abound.
The most serious of these is the issue of Obama’s patriotism. Middle America will not vote -- nor should they -- for anyone who is not deeply and unequivocally proud to be an American. And the evidence needed to make this case against Obama keeps getting stronger -- whether it is the video of his minister trashing this country; or the faces in the congregation clapping their approval; or the photo of Obama’s hand at his side during the national anthem; or his weak and foolish explanation for not wearing the flag pin. Presented together it is not an unfair jump to conclude Obama has a problem with patriotism. Then add that middle name. Point-Set-Match.
By November there will be two Obamas. The articulate, attractive, dynamic candidate who inspired the nation with his message of hope and would be the first African American President and the anti-war, left-wing, inexperienced black candidate with a patriotism problem.
It’s all up to Obama now -- and a few 527s.
Subject: I like to read obscure articles on the 'net...
… and pretend that I have friends who share my interests! :p
I’m going to the beach next week. But I’ll be back. ‘Til then:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26814
“For or Against? “by Bay Buchanan
It’s finally over: the mother of all primaries has done her job reducing the field to two. But in reality there is only one candidate. Barack Obama. In November he will win or he will lose.
John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama. The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps. And while his strong suite is experience, especially on military matters, it was gained almost entirely in Washington, a city that 80% of Americans now believe has miserably misled and mismanaged the nation.
Since McCain has become the presumptive nominee, I have spoken at more than two dozen Republican gatherings. The sentiment everywhere can best be summarized in the words of one of the activists, “No matter who wins in November, we lose.”
Some pundits are suggesting that because Obama is having difficulty attracting Hillary’s women and Reagan Democrats that John McCain could pick them up. Not on the issues he can’t. Hillary’s women are big government feminists who are not going to be particularly impressed with McCain’s commitment to conservatives to appoint Scalia-like judges. (It was a commitment, wasn’t it?)
As for the Reagan Democrats they tend to be socially conservative, economically nationalist, working class white voters. McCain, on the other hand, continues to defend the very trade policies that have sent their jobs overseas. And he further alienated these Americans with his open border immigration policies that depressed their wages with cheap labor and ignored their plight while catering to the 20 million living here illegally.
So if he isn’t going to attract these voters with the issues and we know it won’t be with his charm, how does he do it? He doesn’t. Obama does.
As a candidate Obama is bigger than life. Die-hard liberals are euphoric over his nomination. He is seen as the real thing -- a man who believes what he says and says what he believes. His candidacy has mobilized millions of new voters, held massive rallies, and raised money faster than Federal Reserve can print it. Obama is a gifted candidate who has that intangible quality most candidates only dream about -- he moves voters -- which gives his campaign enormous energy and excitement. And he did this all the while fighting and eventually slaying the dragon lady herself!
But can he unite the Democrats? Hillary’s women are furious; they shared their candidate’s sense of entitlement and believe she was cheated out of the nomination. Also within the party there is so much tension between the blacks and the Hispanics that there is a rising concern the Hispanics may not vote for Obama because of the color of his skin. (Isn’t this called racism? Or is it only racism if Republicans are involved?) Obama may pay the price for a party built on dividing America one special interest group at a time.
But even before the uniting can begin Obama needs to regain his voice, reenergize his troops, and recapture the magic. His campaign sputtered across the finish line after weeks of appearing struck in first gear. There was no sign of the magic that was once his trademark.
His greatest challenge, however, is dealing with his inexperience. It makes him vulnerable on two fronts. First inexperience leads to mistakes -- as in Obama’s remark before the Pennsylvania primary about bitter voters clinging to God and guns.
Equally important, inexperienced candidates are generally not defined in the minds of the public. This presents a valuable opportunity for opponents to do the defining. (Remember the ACLU card-carrying liberal governor who released violent criminals onto the streets?) Americans like new and fresh but if they develop serious reservations they will fall back to the default candidate rather than role the dice.
Thanks to Hillary and the church that keeps on giving, Chicago’s Trinity United, reservations now abound.
The most serious of these is the issue of Obama’s patriotism. Middle America will not vote -- nor should they -- for anyone who is not deeply and unequivocally proud to be an American. And the evidence needed to make this case against Obama keeps getting stronger -- whether it is the video of his minister trashing this country; or the faces in the congregation clapping their approval; or the photo of Obama’s hand at his side during the national anthem; or his weak and foolish explanation for not wearing the flag pin. Presented together it is not an unfair jump to conclude Obama has a problem with patriotism. Then add that middle name. Point-Set-Match.
By November there will be two Obamas. The articulate, attractive, dynamic candidate who inspired the nation with his message of hope and would be the first African American President and the anti-war, left-wing, inexperienced black candidate with a patriotism problem.
It’s all up to Obama now -- and a few 527s.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Post #159
Subject: Democratic Party, 2008, R.I.P.
“The will of the people as expressed thro the voting booth does not matter.” – that should be repeated by every far-left news ‘personality’ and every superdelegate who has declared for Barack Obama, including Chris Matthews’ former boss, President Jimmy Carter.
Primary votes:
Hillary Clinton - 17, 833, 005
Barack Obama – 17, 571, 347
“The will of the people as expressed thro the voting booth does not matter.” Oh, yes. Despite the media’s oppressing the vote by declaring the race was over months ago, Hillary still won.
Complain that Obama’s name was not on the Michigan ballot. Well, ya can’t blame Clinton – that was Obama’s fault. Democrats should be about counting votes – not making up votes. Complain that Puerto Rico was allowed to vote. Well, ya can’t blame Clinton either – that was the DNC’s fault.
“The will of the people as expressed thro the voting booth does not matter.”
So there ya have the new motto for the Democratic Party of 2008. Ya’d think. so soon after 2000, Democrats would know better. * sigh *
And, of course, the sub-title is “Racism is wrong… when practiced by whites – when practiced by blacks, racism needs to be understood.” I don’t know if Obama is a racist – tho it’s not hard to imagine that some venom has not rubbed off during the 20 years of nodding ‘Amen’ to Reverend Wright. But I do know he is an apologist for racism – in my book, an apologist is even worse. I shudder to think the message his daughters are getting.
The irony is that I was fully prepared to vote for a black man – as I have done before – even after the news of Wright broke. It wasn’t until Obama called for “understanding”in ‘the greatest political speech of the past 40 years’ that I realized what I was dealing with. Race was not an issue in the ’08 election until Obama made it so.
As Obama said, poor white trash “get bitter, they cling to… antipathy to people who aren't like them.” As a loyal and faithful Democratic voter for my whole life, I’ve always voted against racism. I am a member of the Democratic base, poor white ‘bitter’ trash. Now, I’m being asked by the Democratic Party to support an apologist for racism who is half-black – as tho that matters. I wonder if Jimmy Carter can explain that to me.
As I believe John F. Kennedy said, ‘sometimes, party loyalty asks too much.’
Barak Obama has been judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character. I will still vote Democratic down the line, but I cannot support an aloof apologist for racism at the top of the ticket.
Subject: Democratic Party, 2008, R.I.P.
“The will of the people as expressed thro the voting booth does not matter.” – that should be repeated by every far-left news ‘personality’ and every superdelegate who has declared for Barack Obama, including Chris Matthews’ former boss, President Jimmy Carter.
Primary votes:
Hillary Clinton - 17, 833, 005
Barack Obama – 17, 571, 347
“The will of the people as expressed thro the voting booth does not matter.” Oh, yes. Despite the media’s oppressing the vote by declaring the race was over months ago, Hillary still won.
Complain that Obama’s name was not on the Michigan ballot. Well, ya can’t blame Clinton – that was Obama’s fault. Democrats should be about counting votes – not making up votes. Complain that Puerto Rico was allowed to vote. Well, ya can’t blame Clinton either – that was the DNC’s fault.
“The will of the people as expressed thro the voting booth does not matter.”
So there ya have the new motto for the Democratic Party of 2008. Ya’d think. so soon after 2000, Democrats would know better. * sigh *
And, of course, the sub-title is “Racism is wrong… when practiced by whites – when practiced by blacks, racism needs to be understood.” I don’t know if Obama is a racist – tho it’s not hard to imagine that some venom has not rubbed off during the 20 years of nodding ‘Amen’ to Reverend Wright. But I do know he is an apologist for racism – in my book, an apologist is even worse. I shudder to think the message his daughters are getting.
The irony is that I was fully prepared to vote for a black man – as I have done before – even after the news of Wright broke. It wasn’t until Obama called for “understanding”in ‘the greatest political speech of the past 40 years’ that I realized what I was dealing with. Race was not an issue in the ’08 election until Obama made it so.
As Obama said, poor white trash “get bitter, they cling to… antipathy to people who aren't like them.” As a loyal and faithful Democratic voter for my whole life, I’ve always voted against racism. I am a member of the Democratic base, poor white ‘bitter’ trash. Now, I’m being asked by the Democratic Party to support an apologist for racism who is half-black – as tho that matters. I wonder if Jimmy Carter can explain that to me.
As I believe John F. Kennedy said, ‘sometimes, party loyalty asks too much.’
Barak Obama has been judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character. I will still vote Democratic down the line, but I cannot support an aloof apologist for racism at the top of the ticket.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Post #158
Subject: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, Pt. II
The below is an excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
* * *
The Test of a Leader
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points -- not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.
[[T]his crew is going to be around until January 2009.” – and that is the fault of Congress. Never before has a President so routinely ignored and violated the Constitution and built a case for his own Impeachment.]
So, here's my C list:
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.
[Um, Barack Obama thinks he knows it all – his ‘bitter’ comments show just how out-of-touch he really is – and doesn’t care to learn what he doesn’t know. Ask the Kentucky voters how often Obama campaigned there.]
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President – the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.
Leadership is all about managing change – whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.
[Ha Ha – ya mean “Stay the course” isn’t good enough!?! :p]
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while.
[John W. McCain has promised to “straight-talk” the American people about the sacrifices needed to continue “his” war. Will that “talk” happen BEFORE or AFTER the November election?]
Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths… for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.]
[How is that cheap oil working out for ya? :p “[L]ttle regard for the grievous consequences” – has George W. Bush thought out bombing Iran? Or McCain?]
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.
If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.
[Does Obama have the ‘testicular fortitude’ to do the right thing and ask – beg – Hillary Clinton to be his Vice-President?]
To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION – a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President – four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
[Bush has a fire the belly to get elected – it is governing that he hates.]
It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term “do-nothing Congress.” Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.
[Insert your favorite drunken-frat-boy-as-President joke here! :p]
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
[That is why Bush and his pals are so secretive – they want to hide their IMCOMPETENCE.]
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know – Mr. “they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished” Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world – and I like it here."
I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is Crisis
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day – and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq – a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.
A Hell of a Mess
So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.
[I had an e-pal say that Bush was the worst President in history – he then listed Bush’s shortcomings, from the foolishness of borrow-and-spend to a blind rush to war. “Yes,” I replied. “But no President before has let American citizens starve to death in a major American city while he strummed the guitar at a political fundraiser.” Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina – or the lack thereof – says it all.]
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen –and more important, what are we going to do about it?
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?
Had Enough?
Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises -- the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
[I hear ya! But there are no leaders running in 2008. I’ll just join the majority of American and not vote. * sigh *]
Subject: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, Pt. II
The below is an excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
* * *
The Test of a Leader
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points -- not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.
[[T]his crew is going to be around until January 2009.” – and that is the fault of Congress. Never before has a President so routinely ignored and violated the Constitution and built a case for his own Impeachment.]
So, here's my C list:
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.
[Um, Barack Obama thinks he knows it all – his ‘bitter’ comments show just how out-of-touch he really is – and doesn’t care to learn what he doesn’t know. Ask the Kentucky voters how often Obama campaigned there.]
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President – the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.
Leadership is all about managing change – whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.
[Ha Ha – ya mean “Stay the course” isn’t good enough!?! :p]
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while.
[John W. McCain has promised to “straight-talk” the American people about the sacrifices needed to continue “his” war. Will that “talk” happen BEFORE or AFTER the November election?]
Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths… for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.]
[How is that cheap oil working out for ya? :p “[L]ttle regard for the grievous consequences” – has George W. Bush thought out bombing Iran? Or McCain?]
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.
If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.
[Does Obama have the ‘testicular fortitude’ to do the right thing and ask – beg – Hillary Clinton to be his Vice-President?]
To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION – a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President – four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
[Bush has a fire the belly to get elected – it is governing that he hates.]
It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term “do-nothing Congress.” Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.
[Insert your favorite drunken-frat-boy-as-President joke here! :p]
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
[That is why Bush and his pals are so secretive – they want to hide their IMCOMPETENCE.]
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know – Mr. “they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished” Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world – and I like it here."
I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is Crisis
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day – and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq – a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.
A Hell of a Mess
So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.
[I had an e-pal say that Bush was the worst President in history – he then listed Bush’s shortcomings, from the foolishness of borrow-and-spend to a blind rush to war. “Yes,” I replied. “But no President before has let American citizens starve to death in a major American city while he strummed the guitar at a political fundraiser.” Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina – or the lack thereof – says it all.]
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen –and more important, what are we going to do about it?
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?
Had Enough?
Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises -- the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
[I hear ya! But there are no leaders running in 2008. I’ll just join the majority of American and not vote. * sigh *]
Friday, May 23, 2008
Post #157
Subject: Why Hillary should stay in the race.
This is Bill O’Reilly’s “Talking Points” Memo that he reads at the beginning of each show – this is from this past Wednesday, and was actually read by Laura Ingraham.
"The Democratic Party should be worried because with each successive primary we can see the growing divide in their electorate. Obama wins liberal Oregon by 18 points but gets creamed by Hillary in conservative Kentucky. Obama lost big in states like Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania because to the working class he came off as aloof and out of touch. More middle American voters see him as just another bicoastal liberal like those who lost five of the last seven elections. But even if Hillary is the stronger candidate to go up against McCain, the MoveOn.Org types with the most influence in the Democratic Party don't care. They'd rather take their chances on the more left wing of the two candidates. Democrats really seem to be incapable of learning from history. In 1972 the Democrats nominated George McGovern, the most liberal candidate, only to have him go on to lose in the second biggest landslide ever. Party officials installed superdelegates to avoid similar disasters in the future. So if superdelegates were actually living up to their stated duties, this race might already be over and Hillary would be the nominee. That would be change we could believe in."
Thank Goodness Hillary Clinton has exposed Obama’s fatal flaw, giving him months to shake that “aloof” image – actually, she didn’t do anything, he exposed himself. This contest is for the heart-and-soul of the Democratic Party – the far-left of Obama and the center-left of Clinton. And the country is center-left.
‘The math’ shows that Obama cannot secure the nomination with pledged delegates. The popular vote is still very much in doubt. Who is prepared for the Democratic Party to make Clinton “the Al Gore of ’08” and steal this election? The answers go on and on – including those far-left commentators who want to oppress the vote by declaring that the results of Oregan were a “wake-up call” to all Democrats that this race is over. * sigh *
Subject: Why Hillary should stay in the race.
This is Bill O’Reilly’s “Talking Points” Memo that he reads at the beginning of each show – this is from this past Wednesday, and was actually read by Laura Ingraham.
"The Democratic Party should be worried because with each successive primary we can see the growing divide in their electorate. Obama wins liberal Oregon by 18 points but gets creamed by Hillary in conservative Kentucky. Obama lost big in states like Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania because to the working class he came off as aloof and out of touch. More middle American voters see him as just another bicoastal liberal like those who lost five of the last seven elections. But even if Hillary is the stronger candidate to go up against McCain, the MoveOn.Org types with the most influence in the Democratic Party don't care. They'd rather take their chances on the more left wing of the two candidates. Democrats really seem to be incapable of learning from history. In 1972 the Democrats nominated George McGovern, the most liberal candidate, only to have him go on to lose in the second biggest landslide ever. Party officials installed superdelegates to avoid similar disasters in the future. So if superdelegates were actually living up to their stated duties, this race might already be over and Hillary would be the nominee. That would be change we could believe in."
Thank Goodness Hillary Clinton has exposed Obama’s fatal flaw, giving him months to shake that “aloof” image – actually, she didn’t do anything, he exposed himself. This contest is for the heart-and-soul of the Democratic Party – the far-left of Obama and the center-left of Clinton. And the country is center-left.
‘The math’ shows that Obama cannot secure the nomination with pledged delegates. The popular vote is still very much in doubt. Who is prepared for the Democratic Party to make Clinton “the Al Gore of ’08” and steal this election? The answers go on and on – including those far-left commentators who want to oppress the vote by declaring that the results of Oregan were a “wake-up call” to all Democrats that this race is over. * sigh *
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Post #156
Subject: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
The below is an excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
* * *
Had Enough?
Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.
[I saw on the TV just the other day that two guys had made a car that got 100 miles-per-gallon by refiguring an already-made hybrid car. One guy said that he filled the tank and drove some 9000 miles for over a month without going back to the gas station. Why isn’t a car company all over this?]
But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned “Titanic.” I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.
[Yes, and who in our system of government is the last defense against an Imperial President? That’s right – the Supreme Court. And where have our “strict constructionists” been?]
Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.
My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to – as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.
Who Are These Guys, Anyway?
Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them – or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
[I saw Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s coverage of Ted Kennedy’s illness today say that Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for President because Obama reminded him of his brother, Bobby – as someone able to unite. Matthews cited the example of the diverse crowds that met Bobby’s funeral train. Are ya kidding me!?! Obama is a divider, NOT a uniter – ask the ‘bitter’ voters who have no place in Obama’s Democratic Party.]
[Where have all the leaders gone? Indeed.]
Subject: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
The below is an excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
* * *
Had Enough?
Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.
[I saw on the TV just the other day that two guys had made a car that got 100 miles-per-gallon by refiguring an already-made hybrid car. One guy said that he filled the tank and drove some 9000 miles for over a month without going back to the gas station. Why isn’t a car company all over this?]
But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned “Titanic.” I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.
[Yes, and who in our system of government is the last defense against an Imperial President? That’s right – the Supreme Court. And where have our “strict constructionists” been?]
Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.
My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to – as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.
Who Are These Guys, Anyway?
Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them – or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
[I saw Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s coverage of Ted Kennedy’s illness today say that Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for President because Obama reminded him of his brother, Bobby – as someone able to unite. Matthews cited the example of the diverse crowds that met Bobby’s funeral train. Are ya kidding me!?! Obama is a divider, NOT a uniter – ask the ‘bitter’ voters who have no place in Obama’s Democratic Party.]
[Where have all the leaders gone? Indeed.]
Friday, May 16, 2008
Post #155
Subject: An open letter to Dan Abrams
I want the Democratic nomination contest to continue. I like to see Chelsea Clinton on the campaign trail NOT answering questions that are none of your business! :p
Seriously, Dan, I’m not sure if you have any say-so over the other TV shows at MSNBC, but you need to speak to a couple of your colleagues – their favoritism is hanging out! :p
No, I’m not talking about their ‘pro-Obama’ stance – which is annoying. During coverage of Hillary Clinton’s win in ‘bitter’ West Virginia, they showed Obama flapping in Missouri. Why are the voters of West Virginia less important than the voters in Missouri who have already voted? Is that a good message for the Obama campaign?
Rather, I’m talking about their ‘anti-Clinton’ stance.
The other night, Chris Matthews began his show with “The mystery of Hillary Clinton. What‘s she thinking? What‘s she doing? What‘s she planning? What does she want?” Good Lord. Ya’d think she was pure Evil. Where are the same questions about John Edwards?
And, Dan, did you see Keith Olbermann’s ambush interview of Clinton? His elaborate build-up to the question about Scaife left no reasonable answer available. In fact, I had to turn to Faux News and Bill O’Reilly for a fair and balanced interview of Clinton. Faux News! [rolleyes]
How can two guys who are so good on war be so, uh, so undemocratic concerning the Democratic Party? Let all the ‘bitter’ votes count. Their constant whining that it’s over, that West Virginia doesn’t matter, their snide comments, their rude jokes – all reflect badly on themselves and Obama.
At the end of the day, ‘the math’ shows that Obama cannot secure the nomination with pledged delegates and that the popular vote is still very much in doubt. Is Chris Matthews prepared for the Democratic Party to make Clinton “the Al Gore of ’08” and steal this election?
Subject: An open letter to Dan Abrams
I want the Democratic nomination contest to continue. I like to see Chelsea Clinton on the campaign trail NOT answering questions that are none of your business! :p
Seriously, Dan, I’m not sure if you have any say-so over the other TV shows at MSNBC, but you need to speak to a couple of your colleagues – their favoritism is hanging out! :p
No, I’m not talking about their ‘pro-Obama’ stance – which is annoying. During coverage of Hillary Clinton’s win in ‘bitter’ West Virginia, they showed Obama flapping in Missouri. Why are the voters of West Virginia less important than the voters in Missouri who have already voted? Is that a good message for the Obama campaign?
Rather, I’m talking about their ‘anti-Clinton’ stance.
The other night, Chris Matthews began his show with “The mystery of Hillary Clinton. What‘s she thinking? What‘s she doing? What‘s she planning? What does she want?” Good Lord. Ya’d think she was pure Evil. Where are the same questions about John Edwards?
And, Dan, did you see Keith Olbermann’s ambush interview of Clinton? His elaborate build-up to the question about Scaife left no reasonable answer available. In fact, I had to turn to Faux News and Bill O’Reilly for a fair and balanced interview of Clinton. Faux News! [rolleyes]
How can two guys who are so good on war be so, uh, so undemocratic concerning the Democratic Party? Let all the ‘bitter’ votes count. Their constant whining that it’s over, that West Virginia doesn’t matter, their snide comments, their rude jokes – all reflect badly on themselves and Obama.
At the end of the day, ‘the math’ shows that Obama cannot secure the nomination with pledged delegates and that the popular vote is still very much in doubt. Is Chris Matthews prepared for the Democratic Party to make Clinton “the Al Gore of ’08” and steal this election?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Post #154
Subject: Legitimate questions of judgment, experience
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1060220.html
… by Joseph C. Wilson IV….
In recent weeks Americans have been subjected to a litany of outrageous statements from Sen. Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama was finally compelled to distance himself from his radical preacher, the relationship raises legitimate questions about Obama's judgment and naivete.
[Such as: Why did Obama nod “Amen” to racist garbage for 20 years while Oprah Winfrey left Wright’s church in the mid-90s? Why did Obama not denounce Wright earlier for his children’s sake?]
[For those of you who question why a pastor’s statements are important during a Presidential campaign – Chris Matthews, that is an elitist question. Obviously, there is no understanding of the role of religion among ‘the great unwashed.’ * sigh *]
Obama, after all, wants to be president of the United States, and in that quest has proposed unconditional summit meetings with some of our country's most determined enemies, including Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
[I saw on TV that Bill Bradley, former Presidential candidate, criticized Hillary Clinton’s “obliterate Iran” comment as being reckless telegraphing. What is anymore reckless telegraphing than unconditional summits?]
Obama's campaign has been built upon his supposed transcendent qualities and intuitive judgment. His foreign policy experience is limited to having lived in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10, and having traveled overseas briefly as a college student. He further claims that a speech he gave against the war in Iraq six years ago to extremely liberal supporters in a campaign for state senator in Illinois is sufficient proof of his superior judgment in national security matters and qualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief of U.S. Armed Forces at a time when we are fighting two extraordinarily difficult wars. As with his relationship with Wright, a closer examination is warranted.
In the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected in 2004, a year after the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he has done little to act on his asserted anti-war position, and has said repeatedly that had he been in the Senate at the time of the vote on the authorization for the use of military force he doesn't know how he would have voted. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe, with jurisdiction over NATO, he has held not a single oversight meeting because, as he admitted, he was too busy running for president, even though NATO's presence in the Afghanistan war is critical to success in that venture.
Obama repeats the incorrect and politically irresponsible mantra that Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for the war and that therefore he is more qualified to be president. Unlike Obama, as the last acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War, I was deeply involved in that debate from the beginning.
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell made it clear publicly and in their representations to Congress that the authorization was not to go to war but rather to give the president the leverage he needed to go to the United Nations to reinvigorate international will to contain and disarm Saddam Hussein, consistent with the resolutions passed at the time of the first Gulf War.
With passage of the resolution, the president did in fact achieve a U.N. consensus, and inspectors returned to Iraq. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, has said repeatedly that without American leadership there would have been no new inspection regime.
SADDAM WAS A SERIAL VIOLATOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS, had started two wars in the region in the previous decade, continued to threaten his neighbors, including Israel, which he once said he would destroy with weapons of mass destruction. We may not have fully understood how little remained of his WMD arsenal, but were we really willing in the aftermath of 9/11 to give him a free pass, as Obama's rewriting of history suggests he might have done?
The approach of tough diplomacy backed by the threat of military action was the correct one and it yielded exactly the desired results, a unanimously passed U.N. resolution and the capitulation of Saddam when he readmitted the inspectors.
The betrayal occurred not when the president was given the tools he needed to secure international support for inspections, but rather when Bush refused to allow the inspectors to complete their work and decided preemptively to invade, conquer and occupy Iraq.
[So, Clinton voted for ‘a big stick’ – which worked. The problem was when George W. Bush swung that ‘stick’ by himself – un-Constitutionally. * sigh *]
That decision and power was his alone -- not the Congress' and certainly not Hillary Clinton's. Obama is wrong to turn Bush's war into Clinton's responsibility. And Obama is dangerously naive in failing to understand the need in international crises to blend tough diplomacy with the other foreign policy tools at our disposal to achieve a strong national security posture.
Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive. They are learned through experience. Obama's long and close relationship with the anti-American hate-monger Wright, his inattention to his responsibilities in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his careless approach to Iraq all suggest that he would benefit from more experience. We should ask whether we want those lessons to be learned in the White House.
[I, for one, hate to see my Party taken over by the wet-behind-the-ears far-left. Kids…. * sigh *]
[Look, this contest is for the heart-and-soul of the Democratic Party – the far-left of Obama and the center-left of Clinton. And the country is center-left. Why do you think the right hates the ‘Clinton brand’ so much?]
[And Obama’s far-left, well -- Why are the voters of West Virginia less important than, say, the voters in North Carolina? Is that a good message for the Obama campaign?]
(Joseph C. Wilson IV is a former diplomat and U.S. ambassador. He was senior director for African Affairs in the Clinton administration. In 2003 he wrote a New York Times opinion piece, "What I didn't find in Africa," challenging the Bush administration's use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.)
Subject: Legitimate questions of judgment, experience
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1060220.html
… by Joseph C. Wilson IV….
In recent weeks Americans have been subjected to a litany of outrageous statements from Sen. Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama was finally compelled to distance himself from his radical preacher, the relationship raises legitimate questions about Obama's judgment and naivete.
[Such as: Why did Obama nod “Amen” to racist garbage for 20 years while Oprah Winfrey left Wright’s church in the mid-90s? Why did Obama not denounce Wright earlier for his children’s sake?]
[For those of you who question why a pastor’s statements are important during a Presidential campaign – Chris Matthews, that is an elitist question. Obviously, there is no understanding of the role of religion among ‘the great unwashed.’ * sigh *]
Obama, after all, wants to be president of the United States, and in that quest has proposed unconditional summit meetings with some of our country's most determined enemies, including Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
[I saw on TV that Bill Bradley, former Presidential candidate, criticized Hillary Clinton’s “obliterate Iran” comment as being reckless telegraphing. What is anymore reckless telegraphing than unconditional summits?]
Obama's campaign has been built upon his supposed transcendent qualities and intuitive judgment. His foreign policy experience is limited to having lived in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10, and having traveled overseas briefly as a college student. He further claims that a speech he gave against the war in Iraq six years ago to extremely liberal supporters in a campaign for state senator in Illinois is sufficient proof of his superior judgment in national security matters and qualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief of U.S. Armed Forces at a time when we are fighting two extraordinarily difficult wars. As with his relationship with Wright, a closer examination is warranted.
In the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected in 2004, a year after the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he has done little to act on his asserted anti-war position, and has said repeatedly that had he been in the Senate at the time of the vote on the authorization for the use of military force he doesn't know how he would have voted. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe, with jurisdiction over NATO, he has held not a single oversight meeting because, as he admitted, he was too busy running for president, even though NATO's presence in the Afghanistan war is critical to success in that venture.
Obama repeats the incorrect and politically irresponsible mantra that Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for the war and that therefore he is more qualified to be president. Unlike Obama, as the last acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War, I was deeply involved in that debate from the beginning.
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell made it clear publicly and in their representations to Congress that the authorization was not to go to war but rather to give the president the leverage he needed to go to the United Nations to reinvigorate international will to contain and disarm Saddam Hussein, consistent with the resolutions passed at the time of the first Gulf War.
With passage of the resolution, the president did in fact achieve a U.N. consensus, and inspectors returned to Iraq. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, has said repeatedly that without American leadership there would have been no new inspection regime.
SADDAM WAS A SERIAL VIOLATOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS, had started two wars in the region in the previous decade, continued to threaten his neighbors, including Israel, which he once said he would destroy with weapons of mass destruction. We may not have fully understood how little remained of his WMD arsenal, but were we really willing in the aftermath of 9/11 to give him a free pass, as Obama's rewriting of history suggests he might have done?
The approach of tough diplomacy backed by the threat of military action was the correct one and it yielded exactly the desired results, a unanimously passed U.N. resolution and the capitulation of Saddam when he readmitted the inspectors.
The betrayal occurred not when the president was given the tools he needed to secure international support for inspections, but rather when Bush refused to allow the inspectors to complete their work and decided preemptively to invade, conquer and occupy Iraq.
[So, Clinton voted for ‘a big stick’ – which worked. The problem was when George W. Bush swung that ‘stick’ by himself – un-Constitutionally. * sigh *]
That decision and power was his alone -- not the Congress' and certainly not Hillary Clinton's. Obama is wrong to turn Bush's war into Clinton's responsibility. And Obama is dangerously naive in failing to understand the need in international crises to blend tough diplomacy with the other foreign policy tools at our disposal to achieve a strong national security posture.
Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive. They are learned through experience. Obama's long and close relationship with the anti-American hate-monger Wright, his inattention to his responsibilities in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his careless approach to Iraq all suggest that he would benefit from more experience. We should ask whether we want those lessons to be learned in the White House.
[I, for one, hate to see my Party taken over by the wet-behind-the-ears far-left. Kids…. * sigh *]
[Look, this contest is for the heart-and-soul of the Democratic Party – the far-left of Obama and the center-left of Clinton. And the country is center-left. Why do you think the right hates the ‘Clinton brand’ so much?]
[And Obama’s far-left, well -- Why are the voters of West Virginia less important than, say, the voters in North Carolina? Is that a good message for the Obama campaign?]
(Joseph C. Wilson IV is a former diplomat and U.S. ambassador. He was senior director for African Affairs in the Clinton administration. In 2003 he wrote a New York Times opinion piece, "What I didn't find in Africa," challenging the Bush administration's use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.)
Friday, May 02, 2008
Post #153
Subject: Mission Accomplished
The White House said Wednesday that President George W. Bush has paid a price for the “Mission Accomplished” banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.
What price? Somebody named Bush die?
Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Bush’s dramatic landing in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier homebound from the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln had launched thousands of airstrikes on Iraq.
“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Bush said at the time. “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on.” The “Mission Accomplished” banner was prominently displayed above him – a move the White House came to regret as the display was mocked and became a source of controversy.
“President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished – for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,'” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. “And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.”
Oh, yeah, that price – that mean nasty media making fun. Whew – I thought “the price” was something big, like Laura getting a splinter in her “Victory Garden.” :p
She said what is important now is “how the president would describe the fight today. It’s been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy.”
Oh, man – he still doesn’t get it. The enemy we are fighting in Iraq is NOT our real enemy. Indeed, the Iraq War is a drain on and a diversion from the War on Terror and makig us less secure. The Iraq War itself is giving aid and comfort to our real enemy – we are losing the ability to respond militarily to other threats and have provided Al-Qaeda with a recruiting poster.
Bush, in a speech earlier this month, said “while this war is difficult, it is not endless.”
If that wasn’t so tragic, the irony would be overwhelming.
Subject: Mission Accomplished
The White House said Wednesday that President George W. Bush has paid a price for the “Mission Accomplished” banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.
What price? Somebody named Bush die?
Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Bush’s dramatic landing in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier homebound from the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln had launched thousands of airstrikes on Iraq.
“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Bush said at the time. “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on.” The “Mission Accomplished” banner was prominently displayed above him – a move the White House came to regret as the display was mocked and became a source of controversy.
“President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished – for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,'” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. “And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.”
Oh, yeah, that price – that mean nasty media making fun. Whew – I thought “the price” was something big, like Laura getting a splinter in her “Victory Garden.” :p
She said what is important now is “how the president would describe the fight today. It’s been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy.”
Oh, man – he still doesn’t get it. The enemy we are fighting in Iraq is NOT our real enemy. Indeed, the Iraq War is a drain on and a diversion from the War on Terror and makig us less secure. The Iraq War itself is giving aid and comfort to our real enemy – we are losing the ability to respond militarily to other threats and have provided Al-Qaeda with a recruiting poster.
Bush, in a speech earlier this month, said “while this war is difficult, it is not endless.”
If that wasn’t so tragic, the irony would be overwhelming.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Post #152
Subject: Quit, Obama, Quit
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that Barack Obama must drop out of the Democratic presidential race after the June primaries in order to unify the party by the convention and win the election in November. ”We want the voters to have their say. That's over on June 3," Dean said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Oh, wait – Dean really said that either Hillary Clinton or Obama must quit after the primaries.
Dean also said that while the party rules say Democratic superdelegates can wait until the party's August 25 convention to make up their minds, that would be too late to unify the party and defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. "We really can't have a divided convention. If we do it's going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards," Dean said. "So we'll know who the nominee is and that'll give us an extra 2 1/2 months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race and take on Senator McCain."
There’ll be no division – Obama will do the right thing and quit. There are nine primaries left, and Clinton leads the popular vote. Who is prepared to make Clinton “the Al Gore of ’08” and steal this election?
Let’s suppose Obama whines about Michigan. I say let’s have a one-day national primary, a re-vote. I wonder how many votes would switch today. And, Goodness, have a state-by-state, winner-take-all count that mimics the November election.
This is where the superdelegates come in. It is their responsibility to dismiss a candidate who has fatally wounded himself. The only division will come from Obama’s ego if he refuses to read the handwriting on the wall.
Clinton leads McCain by 9 in a poll released today while Obama and McCain were tied. Save us, superdelegates!
Subject: Quit, Obama, Quit
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that Barack Obama must drop out of the Democratic presidential race after the June primaries in order to unify the party by the convention and win the election in November. ”We want the voters to have their say. That's over on June 3," Dean said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Oh, wait – Dean really said that either Hillary Clinton or Obama must quit after the primaries.
Dean also said that while the party rules say Democratic superdelegates can wait until the party's August 25 convention to make up their minds, that would be too late to unify the party and defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. "We really can't have a divided convention. If we do it's going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards," Dean said. "So we'll know who the nominee is and that'll give us an extra 2 1/2 months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race and take on Senator McCain."
There’ll be no division – Obama will do the right thing and quit. There are nine primaries left, and Clinton leads the popular vote. Who is prepared to make Clinton “the Al Gore of ’08” and steal this election?
Let’s suppose Obama whines about Michigan. I say let’s have a one-day national primary, a re-vote. I wonder how many votes would switch today. And, Goodness, have a state-by-state, winner-take-all count that mimics the November election.
This is where the superdelegates come in. It is their responsibility to dismiss a candidate who has fatally wounded himself. The only division will come from Obama’s ego if he refuses to read the handwriting on the wall.
Clinton leads McCain by 9 in a poll released today while Obama and McCain were tied. Save us, superdelegates!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Post #151
Subject: John McCain and his 99-year war
It is not important that John McCain will keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years if they are not taking casualties. What is important is how many years McCain will keep our troops there if they are taking casualties. Five years? 10? 20? 50? 99?
We are involved in the decisive ideological struggle of our time. The War on Terror is a race against time – we need to convince those who want to do us harm that there is a better way BEFORE they do us harm. The Iraq War is NOT the War on Terror.
How long will McCain continue to squander blood and treasure for no strategic gain? Indeed, the Iraq War is a drain on and a diversion from the War on Terror and making us less secure. The Iraq War itself is giving aid and comfort to the enemy – we are losing the ability to respond militarily to other threats and have provided Al-Qaeda with a recruiting poster.
Do not look for an answer from “Mr. Straight-Talk” BEYOND “we’ll be there as long as it takes to get the job done.” He will not define “job” in a way that applies to a military mission – a favorite tactic of George W. Bush.
To do so, to define the “job” as something the military can do – such as ‘getting’ Saddam, hunting down and destroying terrorist training camps and toppling governments that harbor ‘em, would be to acknowledge that the “job” is perpetual war. And that is fighting terrorism how?
Osama bin Laden, in a videotape released on the eve of the ‘04 election, said that his intention was to bankrupt America. Bin Laden cited the example of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan where a guerrilla war of 10 years forced a bankrupt Soviet Union to withdraw and collapse. How much closer are we to achieving the goal of bin Laden?
McCain warns about the consequences of leaving, but what about the consequences of staying? At what point will McCain say “enough is enough?” How many more lives will be sacrificed? How many more billions? Will it take a terrorist attack here at home for McCain to realize that Iraq is not the place he needs to hang tough?
My fear is that we’ll end up like Russia, a second-rate power with a lot of nuclear weapons we can’t afford to secure.
Subject: John McCain and his 99-year war
It is not important that John McCain will keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years if they are not taking casualties. What is important is how many years McCain will keep our troops there if they are taking casualties. Five years? 10? 20? 50? 99?
We are involved in the decisive ideological struggle of our time. The War on Terror is a race against time – we need to convince those who want to do us harm that there is a better way BEFORE they do us harm. The Iraq War is NOT the War on Terror.
How long will McCain continue to squander blood and treasure for no strategic gain? Indeed, the Iraq War is a drain on and a diversion from the War on Terror and making us less secure. The Iraq War itself is giving aid and comfort to the enemy – we are losing the ability to respond militarily to other threats and have provided Al-Qaeda with a recruiting poster.
Do not look for an answer from “Mr. Straight-Talk” BEYOND “we’ll be there as long as it takes to get the job done.” He will not define “job” in a way that applies to a military mission – a favorite tactic of George W. Bush.
To do so, to define the “job” as something the military can do – such as ‘getting’ Saddam, hunting down and destroying terrorist training camps and toppling governments that harbor ‘em, would be to acknowledge that the “job” is perpetual war. And that is fighting terrorism how?
Osama bin Laden, in a videotape released on the eve of the ‘04 election, said that his intention was to bankrupt America. Bin Laden cited the example of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan where a guerrilla war of 10 years forced a bankrupt Soviet Union to withdraw and collapse. How much closer are we to achieving the goal of bin Laden?
McCain warns about the consequences of leaving, but what about the consequences of staying? At what point will McCain say “enough is enough?” How many more lives will be sacrificed? How many more billions? Will it take a terrorist attack here at home for McCain to realize that Iraq is not the place he needs to hang tough?
My fear is that we’ll end up like Russia, a second-rate power with a lot of nuclear weapons we can’t afford to secure.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Post #150
Subject: open mouth, insert feet, Pt. II
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26004
“Stix Nix Obama’s Trix” by Jennifer Rubin
THE GOP SEES AN OPENING
Hillary got some help from the Republicans who decided that it was time to rough up the rookie candidate. (Whether the McCain team believes that Obama can be dislodged from the lead in favor of Hillary - who now trails John McCain in polls across the board - or whether they hope he can be bloodied before stumbling to the nomination, …
[Of course, John McCain wants a black as an opponent – appeals to racism can play to some %80 of voters whereas appeals to sexism can play to only some %50 of voters. Of course, too, McCain wants a bloodied opponent – and Barack Obama keeps doing it to himself.]
.... they were not about to miss this opportunity.) McCain’s communications director cut to the chase:
“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.’
Karl Rove predicted the mega-gaffe would doom Obama’s chances in Pennsylvania and Americans for Tax Reform’s, Grover Norquist went further, declaring it would cost him the election.
Robert Gleason, head of the Pennsylvania GOP remarked that this would raise “even more questions” about Obama’s values and observed:
"The vast majority of Pennsylvanians believe wholeheartedly in their Constitutional right to bear arms, have a strong devotion to their faith, and believe that our government should be actively looking for a solution to the illegal immigration crisis, and Barack Obama managed to offend every single one of us with this one statement. With a diverse population, many with immigrant backgrounds, it is sad Obama wants to paint the Keystone State with this broad brush of ignorance."
[A sharp commenter [?] at another blog nailed Obama as an elitist BEFORE these latest comments back when he went bowling. Obama must have thought, the poster said, ‘if these ya-hoos can bowl, I can too.’ And, without a lesson, he made a fool of himself ]
Obama must be wondering, “Who would have thought that a bunch of bare footed, Bible thumping, know-nothings would take such offense?” Obama had slipped on the ice of his own condescension. Now the question is: can he recover?
He tried out a longwinded explanation Friday night in Indiana for why he believed the poor downtrodden of Middle America had no choice but to resort to firearms and faith to easy their economic pain, but somehow that did not seem to fly. He quickly detoured into insulting McCain. He tried again on Saturday to explain he had meant no disrespect, but there was no way to take the sting out of his own words. Reporters were left scratching their heads: did he really believe voters would not be insulted by his treatise on their political backwardness?
THE MEDIA DESCENDS
Even the usually solicitous MSM spotted this as a gigantic problem for their beloved candidate. One MSNC analyst put it: “Regardless of what he really meant by it, the idea that you're calling unemployed people bitter does not come off so good. I think that he's going to spend a lot of time on this between now and however long the election goes on.” Other pundits intoned: “It’s bad - and it drips condescension.”
You know things are not going well when Chris Matthews concedes “Nobody wants to be called ‘bitter.’” In short, this was a gaffe so bad that not even his media cheerleader could rescue him.
KEYSTONE IMPACT
Hick-gate may well halt Obama’s Keystone state progress in its tracks. Beginning with a double digit deficit in the Pennsylvania primary polls Obama had cut Clinton’s sixteen-point lead to mid-single digits. His enormous TV ad buy and the Clinton’s Three Stooges routine (Mark Penn, Bill and Hillary) had managed to fumble Hillary’s lead, tripping over free trade and repressed memories of Bosnia.
By Friday (before the effect of Hick-gate could register), Clinton’s lead in the Realclearpolitics.com average hovered just above seven points (but that included an outlying Survey USA poll which still showed her ahead by 18 points).
Now Clinton has her chance to short circuit Obama’s already anemic outreach to white working class voters. If not impressed with his “37” bowling score they likely won’t be thrilled to learn that he equates them with Lil Abner characters.
Before Friday some Pennsylvania voters might already have been worried about Obama’ outlook on America because of his long time association with the hate-mongering Reverend Wright. They might have even been irked after reading in Obama’s memoirs that he considers the country beset by racists around every corner and even in his own family.
Well now Hillary can fully exploit those suspicions that Obama is an elitist who looks down on his fellow citizens, regarding them as narrow-minded and foolish. She need not touch the remarks of Reverend Wright (and risk being labeled a race baiter herself): she now has Obama’s own words to work with.
What’s more, Obama’s somewhat ludicrous attempt to appeal to gun owners in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) is now likely kaput. They likely wouldn’t have fallen for it anyway. Contrary to his perception that they are dullards, these voters are smart enough to doubt the sincerity of a man who favored strict gun control as a state senator and failed to sign on to the Congressional friend of the court brief asking the Supreme Court to hold the D.C. handgun ban unconstitutional.
IMPACT
Next week’s voting will reveal how deep Obama’s self-inflicted wound is. Should Hillary nab a comfortable win in Pennsylvania, any hopes of putting her out of the Democrats’ misery will vanish. All eyes will turn to the exit polls. If Obama has dug his own grave with working class white voters (the very segment that was fleeing his coalition in Texas and Ohio) the superdelegates will perk up. Then her dire warnings of impending doom for the Democratic Party with an Obama nominee might seem downright credible.
[Barak Obama has been judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character.]
And John McCain? He is living up to his self-described billing as the luckiest man alive.
Subject: open mouth, insert feet, Pt. II
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26004
“Stix Nix Obama’s Trix” by Jennifer Rubin
THE GOP SEES AN OPENING
Hillary got some help from the Republicans who decided that it was time to rough up the rookie candidate. (Whether the McCain team believes that Obama can be dislodged from the lead in favor of Hillary - who now trails John McCain in polls across the board - or whether they hope he can be bloodied before stumbling to the nomination, …
[Of course, John McCain wants a black as an opponent – appeals to racism can play to some %80 of voters whereas appeals to sexism can play to only some %50 of voters. Of course, too, McCain wants a bloodied opponent – and Barack Obama keeps doing it to himself.]
.... they were not about to miss this opportunity.) McCain’s communications director cut to the chase:
“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.’
Karl Rove predicted the mega-gaffe would doom Obama’s chances in Pennsylvania and Americans for Tax Reform’s, Grover Norquist went further, declaring it would cost him the election.
Robert Gleason, head of the Pennsylvania GOP remarked that this would raise “even more questions” about Obama’s values and observed:
"The vast majority of Pennsylvanians believe wholeheartedly in their Constitutional right to bear arms, have a strong devotion to their faith, and believe that our government should be actively looking for a solution to the illegal immigration crisis, and Barack Obama managed to offend every single one of us with this one statement. With a diverse population, many with immigrant backgrounds, it is sad Obama wants to paint the Keystone State with this broad brush of ignorance."
[A sharp commenter [?] at another blog nailed Obama as an elitist BEFORE these latest comments back when he went bowling. Obama must have thought, the poster said, ‘if these ya-hoos can bowl, I can too.’ And, without a lesson, he made a fool of himself ]
Obama must be wondering, “Who would have thought that a bunch of bare footed, Bible thumping, know-nothings would take such offense?” Obama had slipped on the ice of his own condescension. Now the question is: can he recover?
He tried out a longwinded explanation Friday night in Indiana for why he believed the poor downtrodden of Middle America had no choice but to resort to firearms and faith to easy their economic pain, but somehow that did not seem to fly. He quickly detoured into insulting McCain. He tried again on Saturday to explain he had meant no disrespect, but there was no way to take the sting out of his own words. Reporters were left scratching their heads: did he really believe voters would not be insulted by his treatise on their political backwardness?
THE MEDIA DESCENDS
Even the usually solicitous MSM spotted this as a gigantic problem for their beloved candidate. One MSNC analyst put it: “Regardless of what he really meant by it, the idea that you're calling unemployed people bitter does not come off so good. I think that he's going to spend a lot of time on this between now and however long the election goes on.” Other pundits intoned: “It’s bad - and it drips condescension.”
You know things are not going well when Chris Matthews concedes “Nobody wants to be called ‘bitter.’” In short, this was a gaffe so bad that not even his media cheerleader could rescue him.
KEYSTONE IMPACT
Hick-gate may well halt Obama’s Keystone state progress in its tracks. Beginning with a double digit deficit in the Pennsylvania primary polls Obama had cut Clinton’s sixteen-point lead to mid-single digits. His enormous TV ad buy and the Clinton’s Three Stooges routine (Mark Penn, Bill and Hillary) had managed to fumble Hillary’s lead, tripping over free trade and repressed memories of Bosnia.
By Friday (before the effect of Hick-gate could register), Clinton’s lead in the Realclearpolitics.com average hovered just above seven points (but that included an outlying Survey USA poll which still showed her ahead by 18 points).
Now Clinton has her chance to short circuit Obama’s already anemic outreach to white working class voters. If not impressed with his “37” bowling score they likely won’t be thrilled to learn that he equates them with Lil Abner characters.
Before Friday some Pennsylvania voters might already have been worried about Obama’ outlook on America because of his long time association with the hate-mongering Reverend Wright. They might have even been irked after reading in Obama’s memoirs that he considers the country beset by racists around every corner and even in his own family.
Well now Hillary can fully exploit those suspicions that Obama is an elitist who looks down on his fellow citizens, regarding them as narrow-minded and foolish. She need not touch the remarks of Reverend Wright (and risk being labeled a race baiter herself): she now has Obama’s own words to work with.
What’s more, Obama’s somewhat ludicrous attempt to appeal to gun owners in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) is now likely kaput. They likely wouldn’t have fallen for it anyway. Contrary to his perception that they are dullards, these voters are smart enough to doubt the sincerity of a man who favored strict gun control as a state senator and failed to sign on to the Congressional friend of the court brief asking the Supreme Court to hold the D.C. handgun ban unconstitutional.
IMPACT
Next week’s voting will reveal how deep Obama’s self-inflicted wound is. Should Hillary nab a comfortable win in Pennsylvania, any hopes of putting her out of the Democrats’ misery will vanish. All eyes will turn to the exit polls. If Obama has dug his own grave with working class white voters (the very segment that was fleeing his coalition in Texas and Ohio) the superdelegates will perk up. Then her dire warnings of impending doom for the Democratic Party with an Obama nominee might seem downright credible.
[Barak Obama has been judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character.]
And John McCain? He is living up to his self-described billing as the luckiest man alive.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Post #149
Subject: open mouth, insert feet
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26004
“Stix Nix Obama’s Trix” by Jennifer Rubin
Barack Obama broke the first rule of Democratic presidential politics: never let on that you believe rural American voters are hicks straight out of Deliverance. Unfortunately for The Chosen One’s adoring fans, he could not have picked a worse time to reveal his contempt for average Americans.
[“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unless Barack Obama believes that, he shouldn’t be President. Yes, that applies to all candidates.]
THE MOTHER OF ALL GAFFES
On Friday the usually Obamaphile Huffington Report turned the tables on him, breaking a story (complete with audio tape) that Obama had regaled a hoity-toity California fundraising audience with his thoughts on the rural folk of Pennsylvania. In remarks that his Left- wing Harvard professors would heartily endorse, he explained that the Californians should take pity on Pennsylvanians:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them, And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
[In case Obama doesn’t get it, “bitter” is not offensive. What is offensive is the idea that “bitterness” can explain religious fervor. Did “bitterness” cause Obama to nod “Amen” to Reverend Wright for 20 years? There was no “bitterness” 50 years ago, how to explain those other ‘clings?’]
This was manna from political heaven for Hillary Clinton (who had spent most of Friday explaining a new set of fabrications from Bill about her brush with death in Bosnia) just as she was heading off into the political wilderness.
The Pennsylvania primary next week is do or die for Hillary. A loss or narrow win will send her packing; a comfortable victory will hush the hounds baying for her to leave the race. And for the campaign which could not shoot straight (or rather could not keep their shooting stories straight), the Clinton team finally had a clear shot at their target.
Even the worst-run presidential campaign in recent memory could see this opening. Hillary charged out with comments at a campaign appearance chiding Mr. Hope for finding only bitterness in Pennsylvania. (“I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves.”) and then moved in for the kill:
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”
The Clinton camp spent the remainder of the weekend pounding at Obama, Hillary personally whacking at him and surrogatees descending en masse to make certain the entire state knew they had been insulted.
[Not so bad for “the worst-run presidential campaign in recent memory,” huh?]
Subject: open mouth, insert feet
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26004
“Stix Nix Obama’s Trix” by Jennifer Rubin
Barack Obama broke the first rule of Democratic presidential politics: never let on that you believe rural American voters are hicks straight out of Deliverance. Unfortunately for The Chosen One’s adoring fans, he could not have picked a worse time to reveal his contempt for average Americans.
[“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unless Barack Obama believes that, he shouldn’t be President. Yes, that applies to all candidates.]
THE MOTHER OF ALL GAFFES
On Friday the usually Obamaphile Huffington Report turned the tables on him, breaking a story (complete with audio tape) that Obama had regaled a hoity-toity California fundraising audience with his thoughts on the rural folk of Pennsylvania. In remarks that his Left- wing Harvard professors would heartily endorse, he explained that the Californians should take pity on Pennsylvanians:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them, And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
[In case Obama doesn’t get it, “bitter” is not offensive. What is offensive is the idea that “bitterness” can explain religious fervor. Did “bitterness” cause Obama to nod “Amen” to Reverend Wright for 20 years? There was no “bitterness” 50 years ago, how to explain those other ‘clings?’]
This was manna from political heaven for Hillary Clinton (who had spent most of Friday explaining a new set of fabrications from Bill about her brush with death in Bosnia) just as she was heading off into the political wilderness.
The Pennsylvania primary next week is do or die for Hillary. A loss or narrow win will send her packing; a comfortable victory will hush the hounds baying for her to leave the race. And for the campaign which could not shoot straight (or rather could not keep their shooting stories straight), the Clinton team finally had a clear shot at their target.
Even the worst-run presidential campaign in recent memory could see this opening. Hillary charged out with comments at a campaign appearance chiding Mr. Hope for finding only bitterness in Pennsylvania. (“I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves.”) and then moved in for the kill:
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”
The Clinton camp spent the remainder of the weekend pounding at Obama, Hillary personally whacking at him and surrogatees descending en masse to make certain the entire state knew they had been insulted.
[Not so bad for “the worst-run presidential campaign in recent memory,” huh?]
Friday, April 11, 2008
Post #148
Subject: Joe Lieberman, another politician...
I’m no fool. I realize most politicians are the worst form of human scum, lyin’ cheatin’ bastards who’ll do anything to get elected. Sometimes, tho, I’ll run across one whom I think to be misguided but honest.
Joe Lieberman
Senator Lieberman's re-election campaign caused its own Web site to crash on the eve of the August 2006 Connecticut primary, federal investigators have found, not supporters of Democratic challenger Ned Lamont, whom Lieberman implied were responsible.
"In short, the server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured," according to an October 25, 2006, e-mail included in FBI documents obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. "There was no evidence of (an) attack."
That was some two weeks BEFORE the general election. Who in the Lieberman campaign knew about this – that is, the charge that their political opponent engaged in dirty tricks was false – BEFORE the election?
Lamont said Wednesday that Lieberman, a Democratic-leaning independent, should apologize.
"Senator Lieberman's campaign team accused an awful lot of good people of breaking the law on the eve of the primary, and they did it for political purposes," Lamont told the AP in a telephone interview. "If he does the right thing, he'll stand up and say, 'I was wrong."
Lieberman had implied that Lamont supporters had hacked the site, saying on primary day: "I'm concerned that our Web site is knocked out on the day of the primary, you'd assume it wasn't any casual observer."
His campaign asked the Justice Department to investigate; Lamont's campaign denied involvement.
A Lieberman spokesman said Wednesday that the Senator considered the case closed.
"We were told by our Web site administrator that there was clear evidence of an outside effort to disrupt our site, and that the administrator was so certain that the site had been attacked that he was willing to swear to it in a legal affidavit," Dan Gerstein said.
Not so fast. Joe Lieberman should apologize for the false accusations and for the time between when he first knew the accusations were false and now. It’s only decent.
And un-political….
Subject: Joe Lieberman, another politician...
I’m no fool. I realize most politicians are the worst form of human scum, lyin’ cheatin’ bastards who’ll do anything to get elected. Sometimes, tho, I’ll run across one whom I think to be misguided but honest.
Joe Lieberman
Senator Lieberman's re-election campaign caused its own Web site to crash on the eve of the August 2006 Connecticut primary, federal investigators have found, not supporters of Democratic challenger Ned Lamont, whom Lieberman implied were responsible.
"In short, the server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured," according to an October 25, 2006, e-mail included in FBI documents obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. "There was no evidence of (an) attack."
That was some two weeks BEFORE the general election. Who in the Lieberman campaign knew about this – that is, the charge that their political opponent engaged in dirty tricks was false – BEFORE the election?
Lamont said Wednesday that Lieberman, a Democratic-leaning independent, should apologize.
"Senator Lieberman's campaign team accused an awful lot of good people of breaking the law on the eve of the primary, and they did it for political purposes," Lamont told the AP in a telephone interview. "If he does the right thing, he'll stand up and say, 'I was wrong."
Lieberman had implied that Lamont supporters had hacked the site, saying on primary day: "I'm concerned that our Web site is knocked out on the day of the primary, you'd assume it wasn't any casual observer."
His campaign asked the Justice Department to investigate; Lamont's campaign denied involvement.
A Lieberman spokesman said Wednesday that the Senator considered the case closed.
"We were told by our Web site administrator that there was clear evidence of an outside effort to disrupt our site, and that the administrator was so certain that the site had been attacked that he was willing to swear to it in a legal affidavit," Dan Gerstein said.
Not so fast. Joe Lieberman should apologize for the false accusations and for the time between when he first knew the accusations were false and now. It’s only decent.
And un-political….
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Post #!47
Subject: … from Hot Air
An e-pal sent in “a discussion of the current presidential campaign's 'identity politics'... an excerpt from the discussion section after the post, which i find is usually as, or more, enlightening than blog posts themselves:
“The elitists and their candidates know nothing about America outside their Gulfstream ghettos and it is way too late for them to even start pretending that they do. All it does is to further insult us ‘great unwashed’ out here in ‘Jesusland.’
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/05/the-irony-of-identity-politics/
“Roses are red, Grasses are green; get off your ass and join the Marines!”
Racism was not a part of the ’08 campaign – ‘til Barak Obama made it so. He called for “understanding” of Reverend Wright – thereby exposing himself as a racist… or at least an apologist for racism. I can’t vote for that.
Of course, I can’t vote for the bankrupting of America either – which is exactly what Osama Bin Laden wants. [rolleyes]
Subject: … from Hot Air
An e-pal sent in “a discussion of the current presidential campaign's 'identity politics'... an excerpt from the discussion section after the post, which i find is usually as, or more, enlightening than blog posts themselves:
“The elitists and their candidates know nothing about America outside their Gulfstream ghettos and it is way too late for them to even start pretending that they do. All it does is to further insult us ‘great unwashed’ out here in ‘Jesusland.’
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/05/the-irony-of-identity-politics/
“Roses are red, Grasses are green; get off your ass and join the Marines!”
Racism was not a part of the ’08 campaign – ‘til Barak Obama made it so. He called for “understanding” of Reverend Wright – thereby exposing himself as a racist… or at least an apologist for racism. I can’t vote for that.
Of course, I can’t vote for the bankrupting of America either – which is exactly what Osama Bin Laden wants. [rolleyes]
Friday, April 04, 2008
Post #146
Subject: Exactly… Pt. II
Is America ready for a black President? Yes, we are.
Can America elect a black candidate for President who shares Dr. King’s faith in America’s ideals? Yes, we can.
Can America elect a racist? No, we can’t.
... from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23918341/
Poll: Clinton leads Obama, McCain in key states
Primary vote between Democrats split sharply along racial lines
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton holds a 9-point lead over rival Barack Obama among likely Pennsylvania Democratic primary voters ahead of the state's April 22 primary, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.
Clinton, a New York senator who would be the first female president, leads the Illinois senator 50 percent to 41 percent, the poll found. She also runs better against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio -- all important swing states in the general election.
In a general election matchup in Florida, McCain closely trails Clinton 42 percent to 44 percent but McCain leads Obama, who would be the first black president, 46 percent to 37 percent, according to the poll.
"The difference between Clinton and Obama in Florida is the white vote," said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
In Ohio, Clinton has a 48 to 39 percent lead over McCain after months of too-close-to-call results, the poll found. In an Obama-McCain matchup, Obama gets 43 percent against 42 percent for McCain.
In Pennsylvania, Clinton tops McCain 48 to 40 percent and Obama leads the Arizona senator 43 percent to 39 percent.
Among Pennsylvania Democrats, Clinton leads 54 to 37 percent with women and ties Obama with men at 46 percent support.
The primary vote between Clinton and Obama splits sharply along racial lines.
Clinon leads 59 to 34 percent among white Pennsylvania likely primary voters while Obama leads 73 to 11 percent among black Democrats, the poll found.
Roughly 44 percent of people in all three states said the economy was the most important issue in their vote, while about a quarter of respondents said the war in Iraq is most important. The economic concerns of voters make Ohio a tougher challenge for McCain than has traditionally been the case for Republicans, who have never won the White House without carrying Ohio," Brown said. "But Obama's weakness among white men is an indication that he has not yet closed the sale among the lunch bucket brigade."
The poll was conducted March 24 through 31. Quinnipiac surveyed 1,135 Florida voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent; 1,238 Ohio voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent; 3,484 Pennsylvania voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percent including 1,549 Democratic likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent
Subject: Exactly… Pt. II
Is America ready for a black President? Yes, we are.
Can America elect a black candidate for President who shares Dr. King’s faith in America’s ideals? Yes, we can.
Can America elect a racist? No, we can’t.
... from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23918341/
Poll: Clinton leads Obama, McCain in key states
Primary vote between Democrats split sharply along racial lines
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton holds a 9-point lead over rival Barack Obama among likely Pennsylvania Democratic primary voters ahead of the state's April 22 primary, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.
Clinton, a New York senator who would be the first female president, leads the Illinois senator 50 percent to 41 percent, the poll found. She also runs better against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio -- all important swing states in the general election.
In a general election matchup in Florida, McCain closely trails Clinton 42 percent to 44 percent but McCain leads Obama, who would be the first black president, 46 percent to 37 percent, according to the poll.
"The difference between Clinton and Obama in Florida is the white vote," said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
In Ohio, Clinton has a 48 to 39 percent lead over McCain after months of too-close-to-call results, the poll found. In an Obama-McCain matchup, Obama gets 43 percent against 42 percent for McCain.
In Pennsylvania, Clinton tops McCain 48 to 40 percent and Obama leads the Arizona senator 43 percent to 39 percent.
Among Pennsylvania Democrats, Clinton leads 54 to 37 percent with women and ties Obama with men at 46 percent support.
The primary vote between Clinton and Obama splits sharply along racial lines.
Clinon leads 59 to 34 percent among white Pennsylvania likely primary voters while Obama leads 73 to 11 percent among black Democrats, the poll found.
Roughly 44 percent of people in all three states said the economy was the most important issue in their vote, while about a quarter of respondents said the war in Iraq is most important. The economic concerns of voters make Ohio a tougher challenge for McCain than has traditionally been the case for Republicans, who have never won the White House without carrying Ohio," Brown said. "But Obama's weakness among white men is an indication that he has not yet closed the sale among the lunch bucket brigade."
The poll was conducted March 24 through 31. Quinnipiac surveyed 1,135 Florida voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent; 1,238 Ohio voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent; 3,484 Pennsylvania voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percent including 1,549 Democratic likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Post #145
Subject: Exactly…
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/29/65423/4259
As a loyal and faithful Democratic voter for my whole life, I’ve always voted against racism. I am a member of the Democratic base, poor white trash. Now, I’m being asked by the Democratic Party to support a racist who is half-black – as tho that matters.
As I believe John F. Kennedy said, ‘sometimes, party loyalty asks too much.'
Subject: Exactly…
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/29/65423/4259
As a loyal and faithful Democratic voter for my whole life, I’ve always voted against racism. I am a member of the Democratic base, poor white trash. Now, I’m being asked by the Democratic Party to support a racist who is half-black – as tho that matters.
As I believe John F. Kennedy said, ‘sometimes, party loyalty asks too much.'
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