Posts from — August 2008

That Great White Hunter, Vice President Darth Cheney, is famous for shooting near-captive birds and genteel lawyers in the face. Now his would-be successor, Sarah Palin, an avowed hunter and NRA pinup gal, whom MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan called “McCain’s new girl,” is picking up where Cheney left off.

In an op-ed to the NY Times earlier this year, she wrote:

This month, the secretary of the interior is expected to rule on whether polar bears should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. I strongly believe that adding them to the list is the wrong move at this time…

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, has argued that global warming and the reduction of polar ice severely threatens the bears’ habitat and their existence. In fact, there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future — the trigger for protection under the Endangered Species Act. And there is no evidence that polar bears are being mismanaged through existing international agreements and the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The state takes very seriously its job of protecting polar bears and their habitat and is well aware of the problems caused by climate change. But we know our efforts will take more than protecting what we have — we must also learn what we don’t know.

Sounds a lot like former SecDef Rumsfeld’s famous dictum that there are “known unknowns” and such to justify the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Kinda like waiting to see if the snake venom is actually going to kill the victim before going to the expense of rushing him to the emergency room.

Finally.

We now know why we’ve lost over 4150 troops, suffered 10ks of thousands of grievously wounded, murdered a million Iraqis, created refugees out of millions more, destabilized the Middle East, squandered our remaining moral standing in the world, and saddled our children’s children’s children with trillions of dollars of crushing debt.

The neoconmen must be apoplectic.

Iraq Signs Oil Deal With China Worth Up to $3 Billion
By ERICA GOODE and RIYADH MOHAMMED, NY Times
August 29, 2008

BAGHDAD — In the first major oil deal Iraq has made with a foreign country since 2003, the Iraqi government and the China National Petroleum Corporation have signed a contract in Beijing that could be worth up to $3 billion, Iraqi officials said Thursday.
[snip]

Damn!  That is one big MF’n chair!

• • •

Darth Cheney spells it out for McPOW an McLieberman: HE’s still the President Vice-president, regardless of whom McPOW picks as his “VP.”

That’s right ya saps!  Forget all this nonsense about Sarah Palin.  That’s just a Bush-league pander of collosal proportion.  McPOW “naming” a vice-president is just a dog n’ pony show for low-info and rural Republicans, who have no idea McPOW is seventy-two, let alone he’s still going to be answering to Darth the Dick Cheney whether he likes it or not.

And if you doubt me, I got some really affordable Foreign policy cred from Alaska I’d like to sell you. CHEAP.

The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme. - The Urantia Book

Looks like the pray for rain camapaign by Focus On the Family, aimed at dousing Obama’s acceptence speech in Denver last night, may have triggered a karmic backfire.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

GOP Considers Delaying Convention

Tropical Storm Obama Gustav Is Forecast to Hit U.S. Next Week as Hurricane

By Dan Eggen and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 29, 2008; A21

Republican officials said yesterday that they are considering delaying the start of the GOP convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul because of Tropical Storm Gustav, which is on track to hit the Gulf Coast, and possibly New Orleans, as a full-force hurricane early next week.

The threat is serious enough that White House officials are also debating whether President Bush should cancel his scheduled convention appearance on Monday, the first day of the convention, according to administration officials and others familiar with the discussion.

For Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Gustav threatens to provide an untimely reminder of Hurricane Katrina. A new major storm along the Gulf Coast would renew memories of one of the low points of the Bush administration, while pulling public attention away from McCain’s formal coronation as the GOP presidential nominee.

Senior Republicans said images of political celebration in the Twin Cities while thousands of Americans flee a hurricane could be dubious. “Senator McCain has always been sensitive to national crisis,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, noting that the senator postponed announcing his presidential candidacy in 2000 because of the war in the Balkans. “We are monitoring the situation very closely.” [...]

Staging a convention during a major natural disaster would be a public relations challenge for either political party. But GOP officials say the burden could be especially heavy for their party, whose reputation was tarred by the Bush administration’s bungling of Katrina and its aftermath in 2005.

A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico could also cast unwelcome attention on the offshore oil rigs that McCain has championed as a solution to rising gasoline prices — they are now being evacuated in the face of the coming storm. [...]

“You would have to dramatically change the nature of what you do. Much less partisan. Much less political,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because internal discussions are ongoing. He added that all the speakers would have to retool their addresses to reflect the storm and its impact. “Otherwise, it’s the elephant in the room.” [...]

White House press secretary Dana Perino said yesterday that it was “premature to say” whether the storm might have an impact on Bush’s scheduled appearance Monday night. [...]

Some Republicans bemoaned an apparent GOP curse when it comes to summer storms and noted the contrast between the approach of Gustav and the sunny weather in Denver for the Democrats. “The Republicans can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Karl Rove, a former Bush adviser, on Fox News yesterday.

Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida as a Category 5 storm in August 1992, and the sluggish federal response was castigated by state leaders as well as then-candidate Bill Clinton in his successful bid to defeat President George H.W. Bush that fall. …

Forty-five years ago . . . A beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Always we may have diversity of intellectual comprehension and interpretation, even varying degrees of socialization, but lack of spiritual brotherhood is both inexcusable and reprehensible.

—The Urantia Book

H/T to Driftglass; see THIS.

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin Implicates McSame

Two week ago, in my post titled Was Georgia’s Aggression An August Surprise? , I noted speculation from the likes of Randi Rhodes, Greg Sargent at TPM and Daily Kos’s Hunter that Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia seemed to bear a “Made in the USA” label, designed to benefit Cold Warrior John McSame’s presidential ambitions.

Now comes this.

Putin accuses U.S. of orchestrating Georgian war

8/28/08

SOCHI, Russia (CNN) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush — although he presented no evidence to back it up.

“U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict,” Putin said. “They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.” [...]

Adding fuel to the fire was a visit by one of Darth Cheney’s top national security aids to Georgia shortly before the war began, as reported in the LA Times.

Why was Cheney’s guy in Georgia before the war?

What was a top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney doing in Georgia shortly before Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s troops engaged in what became a disastrous fight with South Ossetian rebels — and then Russian troops?
[snip]

Not.

DENVER – Focus on the Family Action has pulled a video from its Web site that had asked people to pray for “rain of biblical proportions” during Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field on Aug. 28…

In the video, Shepard called for Christians to pray for “abundant, torrential” rains during the Democratic nominee’s acceptance speech in order to disrupt it. He had asked Christians to pray for rain that would create flash flood warnings and “swamp the intersections.”

In the video, Shepard said he hoped the rain would start “two minutes before the acceptance speech begins.” [...]

The video was posted on the Internet on July 30.

The forecast for Obama’s acceptance speech tonight in Denver is for clear skies and a mild 68 degrees.

Colorado State Senator John Morse, an Obama supporter asks:

“Is praying for rain wrong? No, it’s not wrong, it’s soulless.”

Amen to that.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,
Homes again, homes again, dancing a jig;
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog;
Homes again, homes again, jiggety-jog;
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Homes again, homes again, market is done.

— Apologies to Mother Goose

In 2006,  John and Cindy sold their 2-acre estate in Phoenix, Arizona for a paltry $3.75 million. It was a hard sell.  The house had been one of Cindy Lou’s childhood homes, which the McCains inherited; it’s where those McCain family recipes were finely honed before they were copied by the Food Network.

“Almost every memory I have of childhood is in this house—very happy memories,” Cindy Loe McCain says. “I want my children to know this house and have these memories.”  Unfortunately for the children, that desire got pushed aside by. . . whatever. But not before Architectural Digest did a wonderful article on the property, which went off the rails by referencing one of the Senator’s rare mentions of his POW™ daze days:

Architectural Digest, July, 2005:

John McCain suffered more than five years of harsh imprisonment in North Vietnam. He was tortured, endlessly interrogated, bound hand and foot, and clapped into solitary confinement; he endured mental and physical punishment. At last, [um, four days after his capture] when it was discovered by his captors [ how does one do that pre-Google? ] that his father was an important officer in the U.S. Navy, he was given permission to leave; yet he refused to go while his fellow prisoners remained behind bars. Because of this stern refusal, his punishment became more severe. Yet the book’s theme is forgiveness and faith.

“Cindy has a picture fetish,” the senator says, gesturing to a bank of framed photographs— family pictures, photos of pets, of landscapes, [and— can you imagine?] of the senator himself on the day of his release from his Hanoi prison. [Wonder who took that?]

Asked whether he will run for president again, the senator chooses his words carefully. “If I talk seriously about it, my activities in the Senate will be viewed through the prism of presidential candidate rather than a senator who’s trying to do good work.”

While one may reasonably ask “What activities in the Senate??” Despite his reluctance to talk about his time as a POW™, the crusty Senator reluctantly volunteered this:

“My best friends are those I was in the Navy with and especially those I was in (expletive deleted) prison with,” the senator says. Describing one of them, he says, “He is one of those (expletive deleted) people for whom everything is either black or white. It’s wonderful to go through life like that. I wish I could.” Reminded of his independent and subtler views, he remarks, “That’s one of the reasons [my candidacy] is so attractive,” and with his signature deadpan, “and one of the reasons it’s so (expletive deleted) difficult.”

One of the Senator’s “independent and subtler views” is that his current “black or white” political opponent, Barack Obama, is “dangerously unprepared” to be president, having just a single unattractive home in of all places, Chicago. McCain subtly pointed out he has numerous homes, too many to even remember, which have prepared him to go to war in order to take care of the many millions of homes dotting the American landscape. McCain added, in his signature bedpan deadpan, “Besides, my (expletive deleted) opponent isn’t even rich.”

Beer baroness turned international crisis manager, Cindy McClown, suffered through a Dukakis moment while assessing civilian casualties in Georgia (”We are all Georgians”) on her sudden tour of the plucky little nation which recently tried to kick Russia in the groin.

TBRILISI, Georgia — Johnnie McClown’s wife, Cindy, visited Georgian refugees Tuesday, and freely shared her favorite family recipes with them despite the fact they no longer had kitchens or the proper ingredients.

“There is a lot to do here and my job in all of this is to make sure that the international community does not forget what is going on here,” she said, as she handed out copies of her family’s favorite Farfalle Pasta with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms recipe to perplexed refugees.

A moment later, McClown inadvertently demoralized the refugees by adding, “And more importantly, that we make sure to continue to bring light to the difficulties and the future difficulties [sic] that may occur particularly with a hard winter coming.”

McClown seemed extremely well briefed, stating before she left, “There’s a whole bunch of things going on right now, and as we [sic] begin to move refugees from point A to point B, or try to feed refugees who are stuck in pockets around the country, we’re [sic] now running into the issue of the blowing up of humanitarian vehicles that are trying to get to the refugees stuck in their pockets. So it’s a whole morass of problems now.”

Indeed.

Mrs. McClown appeared in a dazzling pink wrist brace, as she is still suffering from a supporter’s vicious handshake, which caused an undetermined amount of ligament damage last week. She’s such a trooper!

She reports back to McPOW Headquarters in Phoenix at 2330 hours Wednesday for her next international assessment assignment.  She is not expected to assess any of the more than 4.2 million Iraqi refugees, or the estimated one million people currently stranded by monsoon flooding in Bihar in northern India, or the 31 million homeless from last year’s floods. So many refugees, so few of them worthy of a Cindy assessment.

———————————————————————-
RANDOM COMMENTS:

Gobsmacker Says:
This is the first time since the outbreak of war in Georgia that we can claim to be proud of the wife of an American politician who is running for President.

Gary Says:
Meanwhile Michelle is in despair that she can’t seem to find just the right piano teacher for her children. How does she cope? Oh the horror!

Saltine Says:
Perhaps Mrs. Obama can get “Uncle Tom” to teach her children, I hear there are many such uncles in the democrat party.

It’s a sure sign that the media apocalypse has arrived when one establishment hack, Cokie Roberts, has to swat down another– the always execrable Mark Halperin (with a lukewarm assist from yet another, George Stephanopolous).

Here’s a bit of “analysis” offered up Sunday on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopolous” talking bobbleheads show:

Just one of the many painfully biased statements that ABC’s former political director and present Time Magazine mouthpiece has uttered over the years. Some others:

From MSNBC’s Morning Joe Show:

“I think some reporters recognize going forward if we replicate the way the coverage has been, the imbalance, the unfair pro-Obama coverage going forward, it would do a disservice in the general election.”

In his Time Mag blog last February, Halperin provided the McCain campaign with some helpful advice, specifying 16 steps they can use to defeat Obama. When readers howled in protest at his rank bias, Time was compelled to add the following disclaimer at the end of the post:

Note: This is analysis of what is likely to happen, not advice or endorsement.”

Last year, Glenn Greenwald explained what he calls:”The Mark Halperin Syndrome- whereby journalists seek to please the most radical extremists on the right”, pointing out Halperin’s “pleas on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show for Hewitt to recognize that Halperin shares most of the Right’s views.”

[Note: As of this writing, Hewitt's transcript pages are missing in action.]

Stock up on plenty of barf bags, folks. The corporatist media has a lot at stake in this election. For a list of some of their sleazy perception management techniques, check out
Why TV news in the US is utter rubbish from the Guardian.

Johnnie “There will be more Wars Drill NOW!” McPOW holds his noses as he learns of his Veep selection; some observers insist he was actually verping— in response to Corporate America’s choice of younger, taller real president vice-president, Dick Mittens “Who let the dogs out?” Romney.

Oh and— Happy birthday, “Old Spice.” Seventy-two, is it?

Nice.