John McCain is having some serious difficulty getting the big Republican doners (you know those guys; the 1 percenters with all the money) to give money to his campaign for the Republican Presidential nominee.
It has gotten so bad and his funding is trailing both of the Democratic Presidential Candidates by so much that McCain is planning to tap into the Republican National Committee to help him fund his campaign.
From The New York Times:
Pivoting toward the general election, Senator Barack Obama is turning again to his history-making fund-raising machine, which helped to anoint him as a contender against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and then became a potent weapon in their battle for the Democratic nomination.
To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts, is leaning on the Republican National Committee. Mr. McCain’s efforts to raise money suffered a blow this weekend when a key fund-raiser, Tom Loeffler, resigned because of a new campaign policy on conflicts of interest.
It is just another revelation about our inhumanity toward others. Usually the stories send me into a rage. Today, something just snapped. I just feel sick and disoriented.
It happened when I read this story in the Washington Post. It is not even about the depravity of CIA, military, and civilian contractors under our glorious commander-in-chief Bush. It is about law enforcement officers watching war crimes and doing nothing.
I am still trying to figure out why it caused my head to spin.
But the one thing throughout this period that Americans could always depend on, even after Nixon and the collapse of public faith in the president’s morals, was that the lies the American president told would always be the very best lies that science, computerized research, and Washington’s most devious spooks could produce. Our president may lie, but he will lie effectively and spectacularly, with all the epic stagecraft and lighting and special effects available to the White House publicity apparatus. He is never a hack, never a half-assed, off-the-cuff, squirming, my-dog-ate-my-homework sort of liar. Or at least he wasn’t until George W. Bush came around.
“They hate us for our freedom” was possibly the dumbest, most insulting piece of bullshit ever to escape the lips of an American president.
–Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
They Hate Us.
Yes, They do.
“They Hate Us For Our Freedoms”
The ringing words of presidential banality. Inspiring, after a fashion.
The community Bush limited his comments to hate us.
Not because of our freedoms…they don’t know us
We won’t let them.
They no nothing of our freedoms.
They no nothing of freedom. Not yet.
They know what they dream, and we’re not in those dreams.
Only in their nightmares.
They hate us because they don’t trust us. Not yet.
The people I am limiting my comments to hate Us.
They hate Us for our freedoms.
Conservatives in power and their minions selling it on cable. They.
Liberals like me…someone with questions, actually expecting answers. Us.
Our freedoms, guaranteed. Us.
Freedoms, meddlesome nuisance to Standard Operational Conduct. They.
Bush,” This is not golf and this is not polo which is for the elite. This is golo and it’s the most I can do for my country. Plus, there’s none of them horses around. I hate horses and ponies too. Now watch this ….uh whatever it is”
Just moments ago, Obama fired back on Bush’s outrageous comparison to “Appeasement of Hitler” stating:
“I want to be perfectly clear with George Bush and John McCain, if George Bush and John MCain want to have a debate about protecting America, that is a debate I am willing to have anytime and any place, and that is a debate that I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.”
Obama Fires Back on Bush & McCain
Obama set the record straight, saying that he has never stated he will negotiate with terrorists and pointed out McCain’s hypocrisy on this issue which McCain readily denied today:
The McCain campaign said Friday that his position had remained consistent: no dialogue with rogue or suspected terrorist nations or parties without pre-conditions.
“There should be no confusion, John McCain has always believed that serious engagement would require mandatory conditions and Hamas must change itself fundamentally — renounce violence, abandon its goal of eradicating Israel and accept a two-state solution,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.
The Arizona senator has criticized Barack Obama for his stated willingness to speak with hostile nations like Iran, and repeatedly raised what he has described as Hamas’ approval of Obama’s candidacy.
In perhaps the first major act of unity of the General Election, Democratic leaders are standing up to Bush’s despicable comparison to “appeasement of Hitler” remarks.
This morning, John Edwards appearing on the Today Show, defended Obama on Bush’s comparison of “apppeasement of Hitler” stating, “It is beneath the President of the United States to make these kind of clearly political accusations when he is addressing the people of Israel on the 60th anniversary of Israel. It shouldn’t have been done, particularly in combination with what has been an absolutely disasterous foreign policy.”
Edwards also said he’s not interested in taking the Vice President position but will work with Obama’s team during the campaign and his administration stating, “right now we’ve got to focus on getting Barack Obama elected as the President of the United States.”
Rubin stated, “The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas.”
Biden weighed in by calling it “bullsh*t:”
Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that if the president disagrees so strongly with the idea of talking to Iran, then he needs to fire his secretaries of state and defense, both of whom Biden said have pushed to sit down with the Iranians.
“This is bulls**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” he said.
“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has.”
Even Chris Matthews offered a reality check on Bush’s remarks pointing out that appeasement is not talking with leaders but giving up the farm.
As Obama stated today, Bush and McCain have a lot to answer for. The days of lies and fear mongering are quickly coming to an end.
It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy – to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”
Corporatist War Monger President George W. Bush, in a pathetically desperate attempt to use an International speech to smear his domestic Democratic opposition as appeasers, quoted a Republican Senator as an example of American appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II.
While delivering an address before the Israeli parliament commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. CNN reports that Bush was comparing Obama to “other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis.”
In his speech, Bush said, “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
From 1924 to 1933 [Borah] was chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, and his major interest was in foreign policy…. An advocate of disarmament and the outlawing of war, he suggested the Washington Conference of 1921-22 and promoted the Kellogg-Briand Pact; in 1939 he fought revision of the Neutrality Act.
Of course Borah was far from the only ‘appeasing’ Republican. Indeed, prior to WWII, the Grand Old Party was home to many of the fiercest advocates of appeasement.
If behavioral scientists are concerned solely with advancing their science, it seems most probably that they will serve the purposes of whatever individual or group has the power.
The quote above is from U.S. psychology pioneer Carl Rogers. It is worth pondering his statement as we consider both recent developments in the fight against U.S. torture, and more general considerations about the role of psychologists, physicians, and other scientific and medical personnel in interrogations for Bush’s “War on Terror.”
I was reading the New York Times’s article on the decision by the “Convening Authority” at Guantanamo to drop all charges “without prejudice” against purported sixth 9/11 Al Qaeda hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani, when my attention was drawn to an ad from the CIA trumpeting the announcement that they were seeking applicants for “National Clandestine Service Careers.” A few clicks later, curious to see what they were offering for my own profession (not that I wish to apply), I found a number of positions open. Here’s one that caught my eye:
Memos written at the request of high-ranking government officials by Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo on August 1, 2002 (also signed by Jay Bybee, now a federal judge) and March 14, 2003, assured the Bush administration that
. . . . the Department of Justice would not enforce the U.S. criminal laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.”
Of course, we know that the purpose of Yoo’s memos were simply established as a means of legal clearance for all that ensued thereafter.
Daniel Levin, Acting Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel (December 30, 2004)
. . . . specifically rejects Yoo’s definition of torture, and admits that a defandant’s motives to protect national security will not shield him from a torture prosecution. The rescission of the August 2002 memo constitutes an admission by the Justice Department that the legal reasoning in that memo was wrong. But for 22 months, the [sic] it was in effect, which sanctioned and led to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.”
Note: all quoted material above from Marjorie Cohn, President National Lawyers Guild.
These two politicians, one the current Commander in Chief, and the other the GOP’s presumptive nominee to be the next CIC, have again allied to Oppose the new GI Bill. As Bob Herbert, writing in his NYT Column, “Doing the Troops Wrong” says:
As some of you know I frequent RedState myself on occasion but this particular gem I owe to TBogg.
From a discussion of McSame’s VP choices-
With respect, that’s (excluding former officials of the current administration- ek) just the wrong approach to take. We have to build up a farm team of Presidential prospects. It just does not do to create a Caste of Untouchables merely because their resumes indicate that they have been doing something fairly important at some point in time between January 20, 2001 and the present day. We deprive ourselves of talent that way. And again, we could pick the Angel Gabriel himself, the Heavenly Host could sound its approval and the Lord could issue his unqualified endorsement but at most, that would cause a 48 hour delay before the negative ads start coming in.
Additionally–and this issue cannot be emphasized enough–as much as you and I may be (and are) disappointed with various aspects of the Bush Administration’s job performance, let us remember that we are criticizing the Administration from the right. A critique from the right, however, may not emerge as the dominant critique of the Bush Administration and indeed, thus far, the dominant critique has come from the left.
If we allow the left to continue critiquing, allow that critique to become the dominant narrative and then declare that consideration of Bush Administration officials for high office is verboten, we are effectively silencing a very large portion of our counter-message against the left’s critique and allowing that critique to morph into a larger narrative against Republicans and conservatives in general. In other words, by our silence, by our cooperation in shunning very competent Bush Administration officials when it comes to considerations for high office merely because they served in the Bush Administration, we will allow George W. Bush and anyone who served with him–no matter how good–to be used as bludgeons against Republicans and conservatives for decades.
This is already happening; there have been any number of seminars and presentations on the Left that have argued that the “failures” of the Bush Administration constitute “failures” of conservatism proper. By practicing The Politics Of Leprosy when it comes to personnel decisions, we are implicitly giving running room to that critique. And don’t think it will stop there; there is no reason to think that Cabinet decisions will not be subject to The Politics Of Leprosy as well. Give the Left an inch and it will take the height of the Roman Empire.
