Thank him, my friends; thank him for admitting he did everything he could to elect Bush— taawice.

From “As the sky grows” by Driftglass:

…the candidates weigh in (all quotes for entertainment purposes only.)

Senator McSame leaps boldly into the fray:

“I Can Haz Always Been An Deregulator! Capitalism 4Evah! Wall Street Roolz! You know, back when I was a guest of the North Vietnamese, I too knew what it was to be heavily regulated!”

One of his minders takes him aside.

Again.

Senator McSame (spitting Wall Street’s dick out of his mouth):

“I Can Haz Always Been An Regulator! Populism 4Evah! Main Street Roolz! You know, back when I was a guest of the North Vietnamese, I too knew what it was to be in the hands of unregulated power!”

Assessing the McCain statement, Team Obama meets to plan its response:

And finally, sensing a chance to burnish her foreign policy credentials, Perky Sarah pounces:

Like the people of American, the people of Morgan/Stanley have a proud tradition of freedom and democracy. And should Senator McCain and I be blessed by God to lead our great nation, a [Palin/McCain] Administration would make sure despots around the world know that America will always stand up to bullies, whether they be tyrants in far-away Wachovia, the so-called “Zappa Terrorists” just across the border in Hispaniola, or the Darwiniosocialist Christ-haters right here in Jesusland.

McSame isn’t the problem.

Palin isn’t the problem.

The fact that on November 4th, somewhere between 58 and 62 million Americans are going stand in line to vote to deliver our hobbled, pauperized nation into the hands of the Party of frauds, liars, Monarchists and imbeciles once again?

That is the fucking problem.

Yep. Agreed. That’s a big part of the fucking problem.  but that’s not the whole problem.  Another part is the fact that a 100 MILLION Americans don’t even bother to vote.  That’s a third of the electorate. And that third is overwhelmingly poor and composed of minorities.

• We here at US agree with The Urantia Book’s assertions: Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate.
  The electorate should consist of unified and intelligent groups, who elect only their best members to positions of governmental trust and responsibility.
  The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; it depends upon electing  people who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit.

That’s the only way we can effect government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

And this movie is for entertainment purposes only.
Besides; who takes comedians seriously.

Trying to keep score on the amount of outright lies being spewed forth from the McSame campaign is getting problematic. I was originally going to list same, with examples of some much needed pushback from the corporatist media, but it soon became an overwhelming task. I will only note this analysis from MSNBC:

The Washington Post gave “four Pinnochios” to McCain’s recent assertion on “The View” that Palin never took earmarks as Alaska governor. Then the Boston Globe reported that Palin didn’t really travel inside Iraq as has been claimed. And Bloomberg News said that the McCain camp may not have been exactly truthful in estimating the size of its recent crowds. “Now officials say they can’t substantiate the figures McCain’s aides are claiming.”

To top it off, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to the Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign’s factual claims: “We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

A few comments.

First, the McSame campaign is not even trying to obscure the fact that they’ve abandoned any attempt to make the election about issues. As I noted last week, McSame campaign manager Rick Davis told WaPo that:

“This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

And now we’re being told that they don’t give a damn about media scrutiny– they are going directly to the American people and just lie their freakin’ pants off, hoping to cement the “maverick” narrative into their psyches while their pals in the media look the other way.

Second,  the corporatist media is finally beginning to push back. Having earned the title as “McCain’s base” by none other than the sainted maverick himself, the brown on their nosies is just getting too obvious to hide.

Third, it shows just what a dishonorable man John McCain has become, selling his soul to the Rovian devils (for the opportunity to command the US military, among other things). As Josh Marshall at TPM puts it:

“Basing a campaign for high office on a strategy of deliberate lies is not an issue of tactics. It calls into question the character of the candidate and his fitness for office.”

Fourth, the Obama campaign is beginning to realize that they could lose if they ‘take the high road’ and allow the lies to continue. As Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan put it:

“In running the sleaziest campaign since South Carolina in 2000 and standing by completely debunked lies on national television, it’s clear that John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election.”

Game on.

Update I: Egads!  Even Karl Rove himself say McSame has gone too far. Watch the video here.

Update II: Obama campaign hits back with new ad: “The Truth Be Damned.“ See above.

Update III: Brent Budowsky over at The Hill compiles McSame’s top 12 lies, with promises of more.

“To Russia with Love”

If we needed proof why the McSame campaign is desperately trying to keep Caribou Barbie from having to answer questions that would demonstrate her utter unfitness for the job of VP, last night’s interview with ABC’s former Good Morning America host Charles Gibson (whom she repeatedly referred to as “Churlie”) was at least a tentative beginning.

Asked about whether she would continue the Bush Doctrine, i.e. more of the same disastrous national security strategy that is bankrupting the USA vis a vis two failed occupations, the well-oiled Palin sound byte machine started sputtering. (An implanted earpiece malfunction, perhaps?)

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

Gibson was taken aback, apparently believing the question was self-explanatory. After an awkward attempt to define it in detail, he focused on it’s key strategic principle– “anticipatory self defense.” Palin said, in effect– ‘fine with me.’

The problem with anticipatory self defense, aka “preventive war,” is that it was deemed by the Neuremberg Tribunal to be the mother of all war crimes. Ignoring the difference between preemptive and preventive war is precisely how the neoconmen try to rationalize the invasion of Iraq, as well as a prospective attack against Iran. (Needless to say, their pals in the corporatist media continually aid and abet such obfuscation.)

Preemptive war is akin to shooting someone coming at you with a knife. Preventive war is shooting someone you believe just might someday attack you, because, well, because you say so. (Paranoids, take note.)

Palin also tried to re-animate the canard that Saddam had something to do with Iraq [edit- in Fairbanks]. And multiple times said that she wouldn’t “second guess” Israel if it decided to attack Iran, which would drag the US into a larger regional war that could involve the Russians (who are building Iran’s nuclear industry) and send energy prices into the stratosphere.

And if Sailin’ Palin had her way and Georgia was already a member NATO, we’d likely be at war already with the Rooskies over South Ossetia.

Bombs away.

I was at the gym yesterday when I saw the live broadcast of John McSame’s press conference, during which he made his risible pronouncement that:

[I]n the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.

In my subsequent blog, I missed this angle mentioned by Greg Sargent over at TPM (so many hard bodies to ogle, so little time):

At a press conference just now, John McCain redoubled his efforts to thrust himself into a leadership role on the Russia-Georgia crisis front, announcing that two top campaign surrogates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are going on a visit to Georgia.

Hunter at Daily Kos picks up the ball and runs with it:

So if merely giving a speech in Germany is “presumptuous”, how freakin’ “presumptuous” is it for a candidate to send their own diplomatic team into a foreign conflict? Isn’t that, you know, a job for the President, not a candidate?

Why no outrage on this? I think it’s safe to say that if another candidate did this, conservatives would burst into flames from fury, and the talking heads would be beside themselves talking about how unprecedented it was for a candidate to inject themselves into an international crisis — politics should stop at the water’s edge, and all that. Instead, McCain is using a shooting war to buff his credentials? Seriously? And nobody in Washington sees a problem with that?

Indeed. Why is our corporatist media, who were all over Barack Obama for daring to even look presidential during his recent trip abroad, not covering this angle?

Perhaps because it would expose a fundamental flaw in their narrative of St. John, that lobbyist slaying maverick, and the role that lobbyists and registered foreign agents like Randy Scheunemann are playing in his campaign for the White House. On Tuesday, WAPO noted that:

Sen. John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Repubican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

Randi Rhodes reports that he has received an additional $600,,000 more. Recall that Scheunemann was the President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and a board member of Project for the New American Century (PNAC), responsible for pushing the country into the ruinous ruinous Iraq war and occupation.

McSame’s media enabled hypocrisy is bad enough, but more important is how such relationships work out in the real world. Case in point: emptywheel over at Firedoglake wonders whether Georgia’s aggression in South Ossetia was arranged beforehand between the White House and the McCain Campaign, using Karl Rove as the go-between. Rove was in Yalta at a conference attended by Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili a few days after Secretary of State Condolezza Rice’s [Georgia] visit:

I mean, given that Rove was talking about the upcoming election as Saakashvili was walking in the room, it sure does make you wonder whether Rove said anything to Saakashvili about how a firmer hand in South Ossetia might help Georgia ensure its strong relationship with the US going forward…

I’ll say this: the Administration is even more desperate to push back against claims that they encouraged Georgia’s initial crackdown than you’d think they would be (compare, for example, their response to claims we gave Israel the go-ahead to invade Lebanon in 2006 or bomb Syria in 2007, and their response to claims that we encouraged Maliki to crack down on Basra). There’s something going on–and given Karl Rove’s presence close to the scene of the crime, I’ve got my suspicions.

“Scene of the crime” has an additional meaning— Rove was on the lam at the time, ducking a Congressional subpoena. But I digress. Hunter gets the last word:

Honestly. Take all the worst things about the Bush administration, double them, then add Joe Lieberman. A McCain administration would be the presidential equivalent of a slasher flick.

At a press conference today meant to display John McSame’s superior foreign policy credentials, the Rethuglicans‘ reality challenged presidential candidate either had a senior moment, or he believes that the corporatist media is so in the tank for him that he is free to utter even the most egregious hypocritical pronouncements and escape scrutiny.

Case in point: the roiling Russia-Georgia war. Scolds the morally correct McSame:

“[I]n the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

Excuse me? Has our corporatist media sainted war hero forgotten Afghanistan and Iraq, the invasion of both he so throatily encouraged?

Consider also his previous pronouncement on Georgia that an editor from Wikipedia pointed out contains copious amounts of plagiarized material from the Wiki site.

Guess we know now how McSame would answer that iconic 3:00 AM phone call— frantically try to get online to access Wikipedia.

McSame improvises as an EMF burst fries D.C.’s com circuits

The response from the Obama campaign is obvious— adopt the Rovian tactic of attacking an opponent’ perceived strength. The operative word here is, of course, perceived. As this and other numerous McSame foreign policy gaffes proves, McSame’s alleged expertise is a fiction to begin with.

Should be an Obama PR slam dunk.

McSame’s Mock Obama Strategy Under the direction of John McSame’s new Rovian campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, the attacks against Obama’s character have become so vituperative that even long-time McSame supporters like Mike Murphy and Mike Weaver are crying foul, (or at least, lame). Not only because they are damaging his brand as someone who eschews personal attacks, but because he is now telling outright lies about his opponent’s actions, like not visiting wounded troops in Iraq without camera (per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell) and policy positions like income taxes (saying Obama plans to increase taxes of people earning over $42k) and oil drilling.

While these new tactics reek of desperation, and are thus accepted by some Obama supporters as good news, there’s a method to Schmidt’s madness that reveals a far darker and more sophisticated propaganda effort at work.

In conjunction with their attempt to define Obama as an exotic elitist, out of touch with less privileged Americans, Schmidt and his cohorts are busily creating a strawman upon which to train the anger of the electorate instead of the slime who’ve spent the last eight years undermining their economic security.

I’ll be writing more soon on the psychological dynamics involved, in my review of Dr. Bryant Welch’s new book State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind. Suffice it to say that Dr. Welch (interviewed on Ian Master’s show yesterday) predicts that Obama has two weeks to mount a full-fledged counter-attack before this characterization-transference dynamic becomes irreparably hooked into the lizard brains of the average American voter.

He might start with pointing out that his wife Michelle isn’t a wealthy heiress with a Gulfstream 4 ready at a moment’s notice to fly them to any one of their eight fifteen posh residences to host another press baiting Bar-B-Q.

Wrecking the Economy The New York Times leads today with an editorial titled The Darker Outlook at Fannie and Freddie. Noting that “the companies reported even worse-than-expected quarterly results and more pain to come,” and that “shareholder value has been destroyed” (hear that, pension planners?), the two GSEs have become the poster children of the Bush Administration’s economic philosophy of unregulated corporate greed.

Notwithstanding the moral hazard of using taxpayer dollars to bail out “too big to fail” financial institutions (including most recently, Bear Sterns), looks like that’s what’s going to happen. Heck, what’s another few trillion dollars of US debt to dump on the backs of our children’s children’s children.

Once again our current generation of plutocrat robber barons have succeeded in privatizing their profits and socializing their losses. Who says the government is broken, anyway? Works for them.

The Surge Is Not A Success Crooks and Liars reports that:

A Guardian journalist returns home to Iraq to find that far from what we hear in the US, the surge has produced nothing approaching normalcy or peace, but rather ghettos seething with violence, with nothing but makeshift walls dividing the increasingly hostile warring factions.

[Read more →]

Latest Development in the McSame, Obama, Hilton Smackdown

In keeping with his campaign’s desperate attempt to ‘undefine’ him as “McSame” and to recapture his sullied maverick brand of old, John McCain went on the attack again yesterday, this time at the South Dakota Sturgis biker rally (where he babbled incoherently and tried to enter his plastic-fantastic wife into the annual Ms. Buffalo Chip bikini-banana-bimbo contest).

McSame mocked Obama by pointing out a simple fact already embraced by the very Administration from which he is trying to disengage: proper tire pressure has a significant impact on gas mileage. So much so that it mandated all cars built after 2007 contain a tire pressure monitoring gauge. Per Time Magazine:

The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

McSame’s ‘Mock Obama’ strategy came in for a little pushback from Obama himself who replied:

“So now the Republicans are going around — this is the kind of thing they do. I don’t understand it! They’re going around, they’re sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea as if this is ‘Barack Obama’s energy plan.’

“Now two points, one, they know they’re lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they’re making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.”

According to at least one source, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates the savings at 12 cents per gallon– immediately.( See also here.)

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that drivers can improve gas mileage by as much as 3.3 percent by keeping car tires property inflated. The agency also says the impact would be immediate, resulting in savings of as much as 12 cents per gallon.

It remains to be seen whether the GOP– the Grand OIL Party which recently banked another $3 miilion from Big Oil– follows through on its threat to hand out tire pressure gauges at it’s nominating convention, a replay of its 2004 convention gimmick where it handed out purple heart bandages to mock presidential candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam medals.

Another proposal by Obama that would have an immediate effect on the price of gasoline is the selling of 10% of the national oil reserves on the open market. That would send speculators scurrying, driving oil prices down to $80 barrel, if not by half.

All of which suggests an emerging theme for the 2008 election. Call it “The American People Versus Big Oil“, with the Democratic Party as advocates of the former and the Rethuglican Party advocates for the latter.

Let the games begin!

UPDATE: Barack hits back..

                 Urban renewal project in beautiful downtown Baghdad

Chris Matthews‘ substitute host, McCain enthusiast Mike Barnicle, reacted incredulously Wednesday to a comment by Iraq war vet Jon Soltz, co-founder and chairman of VoteVets.org, that the so-called “surge” has not been a success. Pressed by Barnicle, who refelcts the corporatist media’s official narrative of the surge, Soltz made a number of arguments:

America is less secure as a result of our invasion of Iraq, the surge being just the latest chapter in a failed war and occupation.

Al Qaeda, identified by many including the Obama campaign as America’s top national security threat, is more powerful than any time since 9/11, having reconstituted itself in the Afghan-Pakistan hinterlands. (Lest we forget, AQ didn’t even exist in Iraq before the invasion.)

The US military, tied up on two war fronts, is overstretched and at the breaking point.

The ostensible goal of the surge, Iraqi political reconciliation, is nowhere near a reality, especially in the Kurdish regions.

An overall oil law and revenue sharing law still hasn’t been passed, highlighted by the intensifying ethnic fighting over oil-rich Kirkuk.

Soltz concludes that the problem isn’t overall troop levels but “regional strategic diplomacy”, one of those nuanced Obama concepts that escapes our corporatist media’s obsession with dumbed down narratives for the infantilized American voter. (For which we can thank an educational system that substitutes  dubious testing paradigms for critical thinking skills.)

Additionally, there are a number of other arguments that Soltz didn’t (presumably have time to) make.

Iran has been dramatically strengthened rather than weakened as the region’s presumptive hegemon.

The Turkish military has intensified its incursions into Iraqi sovereign territory.

Regional elections have once again been delayed.

A national oil law has not been signed.

There’s the huge problem of what to do about the 4 million Iraqis that have been forced from their homes, including the vast majority of the educated classes vital to rebuilding the country.

The decision by the political and military wings of Baghdad’s Shia (Mahdi) militias to lay low. Surprising what a couple of hundred high explosive missiles and bombs can accomplish when targeted at your military and civilian base.

The ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, courtesy of US financed death squads, for which former Iraq Ambassador John Negroponte of El Salvadoran death squads fame probably deserves some credit. That and the installation of 12 ‘ concrete blast walls has turned the city into a fortified warren of sectarian enclaves.

The decision by the Sunnis, made many months before the surge was even announced, to vanquish foreign fighters from their midst, the so-called Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Comes a time when the “enemies of my enemies” strategy becomes more a liability than an asset. Especially when our mutual enemy offers to put you on the dole of the American taxpayer, a perverse permutation of what we call in my neck of the woods– protection money.

Analogy wise, I live in Los Angeles where we have as many heavily armed gang members as the US has troops in Iraq. [Read more →]

Impact of two terms of Bush’s management of the US Economy

The Bush Administration today issued a mind boggling record deficit projection of $482 billion for 2009. And that’s not even counting the off-budget estimated $80 billion being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and homeowner bailout bill.

That’s a yearly deficit of over one-half trillion dollars, most of it borrowed from strategic competitors like China and Kuwait.

Skyrocketing energy costs are only beginning to ripple through the economy, showing up as higher prices in everything from food to tires to pharmaceuticals.

Home foreclosures are up a staggering 250% (in LA), unemployment is rising rapidly, and even successful businesses with great credit history can’t get a loan.

The entire financial system, ranging from Wall Street, investment houses, to regional banks is in a deep freeze driven by the fact that no one knows what anyone’s paper assets are worth. The economy is so bad that Bush has been forced to betray his conservative base by doing an about-face (legacy pun intended) on the aforementioned bailout. Ayn Rand must be rolling over in her capitalist grave.

Obviously, this is bad news for all Republicans running for office this year. Despite the tragedy of Iraq and the increasing threat of a reconstituted Al Qaeda and resurgent Taliban in Afganistan and Pakistan, we’re back to “It’s the economy, stupid” as the overriding political issue of the 2008 election. And it’s hitting the McSame Campaign like a Democratic mule kick to the gut.

McSame has admitted that the economy is not his strong suit, and that he’s trying to make up it for it by reading the book by the man who did as much as anyone to create the current crisis, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Kinda like asking a surgeon with a history of amputating the wrong limbs to take a little off the top.

McSame’s answer to the ruinous cost of energy— his flip-flop on off-shore drilling, is a classic case of bad timing, considering that oil billionaire (and Swift Boat funder) T-Boone Pickens is currently spending $58 million on an advertising campaign that states that we can’t drill our way out of the crisis.

Oh well, McSame can still run as Commander-in-Chief of the “surge.”

As for his snuggling buddy, George Junior, the latter can sleep easy knowing that once again he has bested his father, the previous deficit champ. By racking up the three largest deficits in US history, W. wins the gold, silver and bronze medals. Now it’s on to the Beijing Olympics, where he has volunteered to judge the synchronized waterboarding competition.

UPDATES

July 29 (Bloomberg) Merrill Lynch, the third-biggest U.S. securities firm, will sell $8.5 billion of stock and liquidate $30.6 billion of bonds at a fifth of their face value to shore up credit ratings imperiled by mortgage losses.

July 29 (Reuters ) Home Prices Fall in May, Erasing Four Years of Gains. ...S&P said the composite index of 10 metropolitan areas fell 1 percent in May, for a 16.9 percent year-over-year drop. Regions that saw some of the largest gains during the housing boom, such as Miami and Las Vegas, were the worst performing markets in May. Miami home prices fell 3.6 percent in May from April for a 28.3 percent annual drop. In Las Vegas, prices in May slumped 2.9 percent, for a 28.4 percent decline from a year earlier.

That’s how the right wing meme machine is trying to define Barack Hussein Obama these days, a task made more urgent in the wake of his widely hailed visit overseas. An expedition that John Sidney McCain had taunted him to take. (Careful what you ask for, John.)

Frank Rich put his finger on what was probably the most salient image of the trip in his NY Times column yesterday:

“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

In a remarkable display of ADTD (Attention Deficit Tantrum Disorder), McCain/McSame went so far last week as to charge Obama with political treason:

“It seems to me that Sen. Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”

It should be noted that McSame unleashed this latest display of vitriol in New Hampshire, where he had been greeted by a grand total of ONE reporter, while Obama was overseas followed by some 200, including all three network news anchors. Reports the New Hampshire Union Leader:

The senator’s low-key arrival in Manchester stood in stark contrast to his Democratic rival’s ongoing visit to the Middle East. Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, was swarmed by media as he arrived in Baghdad yesterday for a meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. . . In Manchester last night, there was just one reporter and one photographer waiting for McCain as his plane — a white, blue and gold Boeing 737-400 emblazoned with his campaign slogan, “Reform, Prosperity, Peace” —touched down on the Wiggins Airways tarmac.

A wee bit, jealous, Johnnie Boy? What’s next– accusing Obama of being responsible for the dramatic rise in gas prices? Surely, our corporatist media approved maverick would never go that far.

Hold the phone— what’s this? From last week’s Wall Street Journal Online:

McCain Advertisements Pin Blame for Gas Prices on Obama

To paraphrase Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now:

I love the smell of desperation in the morning. . .

——————————————————
* Presumptuous, the word currently in vogue with the right wing noise machine, is code for “uppity black.”

[Image: Krugerocks.com ]

And you can see why. . .

Lofting PTSD* to new heights. . .

*Post Traumatic Stress Disorder