CNN's Ware Dismisses McSame

So McSame says Barack should go with him to Iraq to get a firsthand view of "success"? I'm sure the escorted Blackhawk, kevlar and tank visit really gives you insights into what having no water and electricity is like. CNN's Michael Ware, who has the best nose on TV, said that U.S. officials’ trips to Iraq are usually “divorced from reality” adding that its “impossible” to “get much of a real picture.” Ware then noted that McCain’s own trips to Iraq have not helped him get a sense of the realities in Iraq:

WARE: I’ll issue a word of caution, too. I mean Senator McCain has been here, what, more than half a dozen times. And we’ve seen him get assessments of Iraq terribly wrong. So I wouldn’t be hanging my hat on the fact that your opponent has only been here once.

Video and more here.

That's what is great about being old like McCain, you see your own reality, senility is bliss for him. Hey Cheerleader Johnny, have any of your trips to Iraq resulted in saving American lives or shortening the occupation in Iraq? Your six visits have amounted to Jack Squat. Dog and pony show paid by US tax dollars.

Printing The Truth

There is a great moment in the Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back by D.A. Pennebaker where Dylan is engaged with an established Time magazine writer. The writer is trying to uncover the Dylan mystique that is intangible, a sort of generation gap personified.

After a series of annoying questions, Bob fires back [paraphrasing], "you don't want the truth, magazines like Time would never dare print the truth, if you printed the truth you'd go out of business the next day".

While that particular exchange was based around a broader "what is truth", Dylan's words always stuck with me. Printing the truth is not in the interest of our culture, we always need the spin to make it palatable. I understand that. I wish it were different. The truth is a powerful thing. It has to be taken in doses.

I'm not saying I know what truth is, I'm biased. So take a current story. Maybe someone like Scott McClellan is telling the truth when he airs all the dirt on his years working for Bush. The truth about how Bush is inept or how he mislead the country is too hard to handle, but "disgruntled", "traitor" and "not the Scotty we knew" are easy tags we can throw at McClellan. These will make the news cycles. A good gauge is always how hard they attack the messenger and not the message. How many segments will be about why McClellan said what he said versus what he actually said? Who will show the lessons Scott learned from the Bush mindset that made a lot of really bad choices. The truth of his statements are not the issue. I hope the MSM can prove me wrong this time. Seeing how a passive media got us into this mess, I'm not counting on them to get us out of it.

Thinking back on that exchange in 1965 with Dylan and Time, truth was too hard to print. I hope the times they are-a changin'.

Bush: Is It Possible To Get More Inexperienced?

Reflect on this:

President Bush said Wednesday that rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan is proving difficult as the wars rage on, and "we're learning as we go."

A few things popped into my head.
1. Learning as we go implies they did not know what they were doing at first.
2. To really learn, you have to admit mistakes, which Bush will never do, so you'll never really learn.
3. Can a Presidential candidate use "I may not know, but I'll learn as we go"?
4. Does inexperience count?
5. What are some real examples of what Bush and Co have learned?
6. Can rebuilding a country and engaging a country in a war happen at the same time?
7. How can someone who does not know anything be so confident about what and what will not work? [i.e. leaving vs staying]
8. What does he learn from getting rid of all the CENTCOM commanders in the Middle East?
9. Is this a disingenuous use of the word "learn"?

More broadly, what has Bush learned about issuing debts to China, the Palestinian situation, rising energy costs, shrinking dollars, housing foreclosures, failed foreign policies, climate changes, hiring cronies without skills, gay marriages, not asking tough questions, looking into Putin's eyes/soul, domestic natural disasters like Katrina, and on and on.

Bush is a lifelong C student, learning is not his strong suit. He is like the old guy that asks "can I get emails on the internet?" He really has no clue.

What Really Happens In Iraq

In the spring of 2007, a conference was held on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Entitled Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, it hearkened back to the Winter Soldier testimonies held three decades ago during the Vietnam War. Of the testimonies filmed, this one, by Iraq War vet Jon Michael Turner, was the most compelling and intense.

Watch as he talks about his "kills".

McCain = Bush = McSame

According to CQ, Senator John McCain has voted with President Bush 100% of the time in 2008 and 95% of the time in 2007.



So even though McSame has broken from the Republicans on a few occasions, he is in lock step with Bush 100% of the time. Read More. Can you handle 4 more years of this?

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Bush: The Denier-In-Thief Did Coke

As per my last post about denial, Bush reigns supreme when it comes to denying reality. The truth is far too hard to bear, so create the lies to help you get through the day. Being a former cokehead troubles George so he makes up some bullshit story about "honestly" not remembering.

Here's a clip from Scott McClellan's new book:

"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'"

I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."

In the years that followed, McClellan "would come to believe that sometimes he convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment." McClellan likened it to a witness who resorts to "I do not recall."

Anyone who says "I can't remember if I did cocaine", yet was a drunk and partied until he was 40, is an addict in denial. People who never did it would recall never doing it. It's like asking someone "did you ever kill a man?" Either you did or you didn't.

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Scott McClellan's New Book

Some nuggets from the former Bush press secretary's new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. Get ready to be shocked:

"McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war."

He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

So with all this candor comes the denial, captured here: “I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

He still likes and admires the guy?

Read More.

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The War Prayer By Mark Twain

A film of Mark Twain’s scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.



The War Prayer website

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My Latest Banner

The "Say Anything To Win" attitude is over.

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South Africa, WTF?

Full disclosure: I love South Africa, extreme soft spot in my heart for SA.

So what the fuck is going on there? Murderous mobs are seeking out "foreigners" who they see as interlopers in the local job markets and killing them. I'm talking setting them on fire, beating them: more than a week of anti-immigrant violence has left 42 dead. Crazy!

NYT:

This nation of about 48 million people is home to an estimated five million immigrants, most of them from neighboring countries with poverty rates even worse than that in South Africa, where about one in four people are jobless. Destitute foreigners are usually willing to work for lower wages, and poor people from here often begrudge the hardscrabble earnings of poor people from somewhere else.

Read about it here.

So where is President Thabo Mbeke in all of this? It is beyond me how he can do such a bad job in everything he does. Where is the government's response? This is what you get when you have leaders who only care about the rich and powerful. Let the poor kill themselves, let them suffer.

And what could someone like McCain say if he were President? "Keep up the good work, that's what I'm trying to get done here with the Mexicans". He could not denounce their actions. Think about that, "Mr. I'm A POW" couldn't stand on the world stage and have any credibility in regards to stopping this. He is the pro-torture and anti-immigrant guy. Well played John.

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Yet Another Reason I Find Hillary Annoying

To be honest I don't mind her, I just like Obama so much much more. But in the past few weeks Hillary has shown her true colors and said so many dickhead things, trying to cast doubt on Barack. The "as far as I know he's not Muslim" was an example of this. She was an asshole for saying that.

Now we have Hillary conjuring up RFK's assassination in 1968 as a reason to stay in the campaign, knowing full well Obama has Secret Service protection due to threats, the earliest a candidate has had such consideration. Does she not see this is like saying, "I might as well stay in, Barack may get killed"? It seems pretty obvious.

So here comes the real dickhead part. The non-apology apology. From the NYT:

Instead, she issued one of those tedious non-apology apologies in which it sounds like the person who is being offended is somehow at fault: "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive."

This is the norm I guess. Just reinforces my impressions. I noticed she never apologized to Obama and his family in context to how most everyone would have interpreted the comment. Lame. Hillary, go to the store and buy a clue.

More here.

Abortion Voted On In The UK

See how another country voted on the topic of abortion. The Brits voted against changing the laws today. They are going to keep the current 24 week limit on abortions, they were looking to cut it to 22 weeks. They also expanded women's rights to fatherless births. This was the first Commons debate on abortion for 18 years. PM Gordon Brown backed the current limit.

Conservatives were looking to shorten the amount of weeks women have to have an abortion down to as low as 12 weeks. Ministers also eased the rules for women wanting fertility treatment. Women will not have to show there is a dad in their relationship. The change will make it easier for lesbian couples and single mums to have test-tube babies. England already has the one of highest births rates by single mothers in Europe.

Notes: Abortion was made legal in 1967 in the UK, Original limit was 28 weeks.

In 2005, 191,000 women in the UK had abortions. Nine out of ten were before 13 weeks.

Read more here.

I am not pro-abortion, just showing how others view the subject.

Bush, His Grandfather Prescott And Nazis

I am not one to use the term Nazis to describe modern day politics. That was then, fascism was huge in Europe, it killed a lot of people. Got it. But when George Bush brings up his appeasement bullshit the other day, I began to give it a closer look.

Most people get that Bush is a dick. He spoke in Israel last week about the potential future President of the US, Barack Obama, and compared him to Brit Neville Chamberlain back in 1938. Now Chamberlain appeased Hitler and gave up half of Czechoslovakia, but Bush makes a massive jump by interchanging "meeting with" and "giving in to" when alluding to Obama talking with Iran. Because Bush couldn't talk with another world leader without flash cards, he naturally thinks you'll always lose. Like when Saudi Arabia tells Bush to suck their nuts or when Putin sells nukes to whoever he wants or Dictator Musharraf shields Bin Laden for years. While you're at it, add China fucking us and everyone they can in Africa to the list.

Enough set up. Here's what I see. You know Grandpa Prescott Bush helped finance the Nazis during WWII. His Union Banking Corp was seized by the US Government. Google it. So Bush is a descendent of a Nazi appeaser.

Now look at the way Bush runs his government. Gulags, torture, secret wiretapping, endless detentions, over-reaching powers, propaganda programs, secrecy. He leans towards fascism more than anyone I know. So you start to see he acts like Hitler. And what else do they have in common? Hitler came from Austria and got involved in German politics through the Nazi party. He was an interloper. Bush is from Connecticut and moves to Texas and enters politics through the Evangelical church. And as a guy who does not go to church, he is an interloper, as well. Hitler was pushing the Aryan race which was never a member and Bush pushes compassionate conservatism for which he has no true interest.

History will do the same to Bush as it did Hitler. At the time, German citizens were lied to and believed in what ole' Adolph had to say. Same with Bush. The lies were believable at first. But as the truth comes out, so will the fall of the Bush Era and the GOP brand. You never know, there may be trials for war crimes, as well.

And lastly, just take a step back. Who fought and beat the Nazis? A democrat in Franklin Roosevelt. He beat Japan, as well. He taxed, planned and completed the task.

Back then America was unified. A lot more than I can say for what Bush has done dividing people the past 7 years. Like him or hate him, Bush has divided us all.

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Wannabe Minority Republicans Wake Up!

This post is directed at the wannabe conservatives who are working class joe's who aspire to be "the man". More pointedly the non-white voters who think being in a Red State is somehow cool or by association think they're well off. You're not reaping those Bush Tax breaks if you're making $40,000. You don't benefit from decreasing social programs. You're getting played by fake "Jesus freaks" who put gay marriage on the ballot to get your vote. And to prove it, ask yourself this: does the GOP have anyone like you they'll promote and vote for?

“Just a few years after the Republican Party launched a highly publicized diversity effort, the GOP is heading into the 2008 election without a single minority candidate with a plausible chance of winning a campaign for the House, the Senate or governor,” notes the Politico. This dry spell is the longest since the 1980s.

Don't think you poor white guys are off the hook, either. Being scared is no way to go through life. You live in a backwater, the newest building in your town is the Post Office. You make less money and work harder. But you still vote for the GOP. You're useless.

US Billionaire Buffett Backs Barack

Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, is backing Barack Obama for US president. The "Oracle of Omaha", the guy who runs 76 companies around the world, thinks current US economic policy, the Bush/McCain policies, will push the dollar lower against other global currencies. Can you imagine a weaker dollar?

Buffett told a press conference here Monday he had offered support to both Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton but that since it appeared Obama would win the party's nomination, "I will be very happy if he is elected president. He is my choice."

Check it.

The Real McCain

This is so typical of the a Republican allowed to talk complete shit for weeks without being called out for it. Grandpa McCain doesn't know his asshole from his elbow.



Check the website. http://therealmccain.com/

Conservatives don't care about it. As long as he's their guy and he'll cut taxes and protect their wealth for the next generation, he can flip flop all he wants. But if Obama did something when he was 5 years old, then its news.

Bush The Wuss Talks Shit About US In Foreign Countries

Here is what is wrong with former cokeheads who pose as tough guys. President Bush is the biggest pussy I can think of at the moment. He goes to a foreign country, Israel, and talks shit about people that are about to run this country.

He goes before the Israeli parliament and goes full douche bag and states that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. On the same day he is comparing Obama, and Democrats in general, to Nazi sympathizers for wanting to deal realistically with Iran, his Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said the U.S. should engage Iran with “a combination of incentives and pressure.” Adding, "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them.” Read it here.

So the military guys say we should engage Iran. Bush the non-military guy talks complete shit and thinks he's some kind of diplomat for ignoring Iran. What would have happened if Obama went to Israel or Pakistan and talked shit about Bush? Such a double standard.

Lastly, what has Bush's policy done in the past 8 years? As far as Israel is concerned he ignored the Palestinian situation for the first 7 years and he has created more chaos and terrorism in that region than any other person. All while driving the US dollar into the ground. What a dick.